Estudios Irlandeses , Number 3, 2008, pp. 132-142 ______AEDEI

Horslips in Irish Musical and Literary Culture

John L. Murphy

DeVry University

Copyright (c) 2008 by John L. Murphy. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged for access.

Abstract. This essay examines the literary impact of a musical electric-folk . combined psychedelic, and with Irish traditional motifs and Celtic narrative themes. Spanning the decade from 1970 to 1980, their success and decline followed the trajectory of the countercultural movement, which came late to . The band’s revival of mythic characters and historical events drawn from the Irish past attracted fans from all over the island, as well as the diaspora; many young people gained an appreciation of their Irish heritage for the first time, as Horslips became the first electric folk-rock band to fuse disparate genres, and to succeed as an Irish-based independent collective who controlled the graphics, marketing, distribution, and promotion of their music. They inspired the likes of and the Irish punk and new-wave rock musicians who followed them, and without the pioneering efforts of Horslips, Irish music and culture today may never have reached its current success, three decades later. Keywords. Horslips, Irish popular music, , Cheryl Herr, John Kelly, Patrick McCabe, Paul Muldoon, Gerry Smyth.

Resumen: En este trabajo se examina el impacto literario de un grupo musical de folk eléctrico. Horslips combinaba rock duro y psicodélico con motivos tradicionales irlandeses y temas de la narrativa celta. Su éxito, que abarca de 1970 a 1980, y su declive siguieron la trayectoria del movimiento contracultural que llegó a Irlanda tardíamente. Al llevar a cabo un renacimiento de los caracteres míticos y los sucesos históricos del pasado irlandés, el grupo atrajo seguidores de todas partes de la isla, así como de la diáspora; muchos jóvenes llegaron a apreciar su herencia irlandesa por primera vez. Horslips se convirtió en el primer grupo de rock folk eléctrico que fusionó géneros muy dispares, que alcanzó el éxito como un colectivo independiente asentado en Irlanda y que consiguió controlar los gráficos, el marketing, la distribución y la promoción de su música. Fueron la inspiración y los predecesores de, entre otros, U2, el ‘punk’ irlandés y los músicos del rock ‘new-wave’. Sin el trabajo pionero de Horslips la música irlandesa y su cultura no habrían alcanzado, tres décadas más tarde, el éxito del que gozan en la actualidad. Palabras clave: Horslips, música irlandesa popular, música irlandesa tradicional, Cheryl Herr, John Kelly, Patrick McCabe, Paul Muldoon, Gerry Smyth.

Horslips joined literary craft and cultural in Ireland. Abroad, they hit the charts and heritage with musical fusion. Playing toured widely. These five Irishmen formed a traditionally inspired tunes on amplified home-grown, counter-corporate and counter- instruments, they combined harder, cultural collective, influenced by the Beats and commercial rock with Irish themes. Beginning , Máirtín Ó Direáin and Elvis. what U2 advanced, Horslips became the first Horslips controlled their stage presentation, successful rock act based for their entire career graphic design, record pressing, and concert ______ISSN 1699-311X

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promotion. They composed music for The 1960s and 70s. Two novels feature the band in Abbey Theatre which exp anded into a concept a cameo role: John Kelly's Sophisticated , “The Táin”. They worked with Paul Boom-Boom (2003), and Patrick McCabe's The Muldoon and have been featured in novels by Dead School (1995). Paul Muldoon, John Kelly and Patrick McCabe. contributing to an 2007 anthology of writers Their in the adapted legendary recalling their favorite concerts, chooses the and historic texts, as they interpreted the Book band's penultimate gig at Whitla Hall in of Invasions, Turlough O’Carolan, the Famine, April 1980 to muse upon on his fan worship and emigration. and eventual friendship with the band. I will This essay will explore the band's musical examine how Kelly, McCabe, and Muldoon's legacy through their appropriation of Irish incorporate Horslips into their own motifs. Horslips blended the energy of the interpretation of Irish identities as transformed hippie movement with the glitz of glam-rock. by the musical and cultural changes of the later They mixed progressive arrangements with twentieth century. Taken as a harbinger of Irish traditional tunes. They issued concept albums cultural change, Horslips pioneered today's that explained the Irish past to an international Celtic Revival within the realms of the media audience eager for amplified narratives that and entertainment. Without the band's example took forty minutes to hear rather than four as a creative force who controlled their image, weeks of class to memorize. For many young managed their promotion, and collaborated people in the 1970s, Horslips energized Irish with other Irish writers and artists, the rocky identity. In the words of Barry Devlin: road to success within and beyond "There was something about Horslips that Irish would have proven even more jolting for kids recognised as being theirs. We get recent Irish performers. lambasted regularly for loads of stuff-- and Horslips began in hippie Dublin. One rightly so for much of it-- but the one thing that traveling revue, Tara Telephone, connected the is undeniable is that we really did change for potential of Irish heritage with the power of ever [sic] how people felt about their own liberation movements. Schooled in the Beats, culture. And the place where people really fresh from the Liverpool poetry scene, Éamon went bat-shit was the North" (Kelly 2004: 43). Carr worked with Peter Fallon on a 1969 This quote from an factual interview by Irish magazine, Capella. Allen Ginsberg, T. Rex's rock radio personality John Kelly comes from Marc Bolan, 's Pete Sinfield, and his fictional take on growing up in Fermanagh, Horslips bassist Barry Devlin's sister Marie’s during the height of . This was a husband, Seamus Heaney, contributed. (Harper band that challenged territorial limitations of and Hodgett 2005: 215-6) The project that who, what, or where could be considered Irish. became the band Horslips coalesced around Horslips drew its members from Ireland and Fallon and Carr's experimentation. Jim beyond, as it represented an Irish identity Fitzpatrick illustrated a broadsheet, “Book of transcending political boundaries. Devlin Invasions”, in 1969. As drummer and lyricist hailed from Tyrone; keyboardist Jim Lockhart for Tara Telephone and then Horslips, Carr came from Dublin. Percussionist Éamon Carr played a pivotal role in merging media. was born in Kells in Co. Meath, guitarist Carr explains that the success of The Clancy Johnny Fean grew up near Shannon, and Brothers and had not brought to fiddler Charles O'Connor emigrated to Dublin younger Irish in the later 1960s a sense of from Middlesbrough in the North of . cultural pride. He felt betrayed and believed Three of the band earned master's degrees, four that "it was important to express oneself in a worked in public relations and advertising, and way that helped establish an identity". they began playing only after posing as (Cunningham 1999: 192) Carr grew up around musicians for a beer commercial. Kells. In Newgrange's shadow, he pored over From these eclectic backgrounds, Ireland's 1950s American comic books. He merged Stan first homegrown success became not only a Lee's superheroes with Irish myth. Carr related rock band but a cultural force. Horslips also during the band's later tours of America how upstaged and satirized rock and folk traditions. he chatted with rock radio d.j.'s about Cú This send-up led, in turn, to three literary Chulainn as if he was a fullback for the Meath treatments by writers who came of age in the minors hurling squad. Carr mixed Celtic with

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countercultural. He elaborates: "The merging if not frequent hostility, towards what the of the two cultures was the kind of stuff you Republic manufactured as an Irish image used to see in Oz and it only took a simple leap meant for tourists more than natives. Horslips, of the imagination to visualise how these like their fellow artists who established such legendary tales might be placed into a musical efforts as the Dolmen and Gallery Presses, format. The parallel was there between Celtic determined to reclaim Celtic stories and Irish and Marvel comic heroes. But it wasn't a glib images for a restless younger audience. The thing and you couldn't treat it lightly", he band also vowed not to move to London. This cautions (Cunningham 1999: 192). "It had to "grassroots capitalism", thanks to the decision be approached properly and fittingly. I had by Horslips to remain in Ireland to control studied Old Irish at college, so it was a case of their music, catalyzed their mid-1970s revival delving back into these subjects and doing a lot of folk themes played with rock energy. Jim of research, like preparing a thesis. Getting Lockhart emphasizes that Horslips never deeper into the story behind The Tain, I began meant to be a "hippie novelty act”. 1972's to discover things that they never taught us at debut LP presented "tunes that had been passed school. There had been elements of Eastern down through the generations". Lockhart philosophy infiltrating into rock 'n' roll, distinguishes novelty from innovation. "No one possibly through George Harrison's interest in had ever given Irish music this treatment – we the Maharishi, but now I was examining wanted to take the melodies that were Western mystery traditions and it was taking inherently Irish or Celtic, put them in a Horslips on a new journey". different form of music" (Cunningham 1999: This journey spiralled off into the mystical 192). but its musical grounding remained plugged in Horslips’ style echoes their sound. Lockhart and eager for electrification. Although the band and his wife took garish fabric swaths from began opening for British folk-rock stalwarts Clery's for the band's outlandish stage attire, such as and Steeleye shown to typical contrast on the inner sleeve of Span, its later career paralleled more the their first LP. Its outside sleeve, by folkish flourishes of harder rocking Jethro Tull. comparison, came in an -shaped die- However, while the British bands remained cut jacket that cost, Eamon Carr lamented, as content largely with reviving or imitating much as "Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part" itself earlier indigenous sounds, the training of did to record. Gerry Smyth suggests Horslips O'Connor and Fean as traditional players, of "presented a direct visual challenge to the Lockhart in and classical arrangement, and music's associated iconography" (2005: 44). of Devlin and Carr in rock amplified the living The cover of the band's third LP, 1974's Irish musical legacy itself. Joe Cleary "", symbolizes this. Paul characterizes the band's aesthetic as Muldoon views the five as "still hairy, fur- "essentially a Celtic version of progressive flaunting Horslips reflected in a smoked-glass rock, with the latter's high art or rock- tabletop suggesting the shotgun wedding of symphonic ambitions" (2007: 273). However, Terence Conran and Conan the Barbarian" as Devlin's remark to John Kelly implies, the (2007: 138). Nuala O'Connor defines their band never took itself too seriously amidst its campaign: "The 'mythic' and portentous were pomp and stomp.While British progressive and important visual and conceptual elements in folk bands struggled to merge aggressive rock the band's presentation, which ran to high into their repertoire, Horslips slipped back and camp in set design, costume, and theatrical forth between folk and rock teasingly yet grandiosity" (2001: 130). This look jumbled, adeptly. for Tara Telephone and fellow minstrels, Jim Carr served as the lyricist and researched Fitzpatrick’s graphic style evoking Alphonse archives for his narratives that structured the Mucha, Hokusai, Aubrey Beardsley, Stan Lee, band's concept albums. His poetic and eclectic and the Cuala Press. Fitzpatrick interwove background deepened the group's commitment florid embellishment and lysergic hues into a to their inventive campaign to raise the volume funky Pop Art Celtic Revival that graced on a musical narrative combination to awaken album covers by hard rockers , folk Irish youth to their heritage. The band emerged innovators , and the band that blended during widespread malaise and indifference, these two genres, Horslips.

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Mixing flair with literacy, Horslips had been conveyed. Inside the sleeve, five longhairs preceded in Dublin counterculture by Tara lounged in Clery's curtains and tapestries, in Telephone. According to Carr, this "poetry glam-rag glory. They mug around a cartoon workshop" grew a "musical wing". (Clayton- prop of a bartender – slickly drawn by Lea 2004: 56) The revue's name, as Muldoon O’Connor in mid-century Guinness adman puts it, "deftly connected the Major Old Heap caricature – who pours them drinks. This with the Major New Hip". (2007: 137) Having glossy interior offers the unexpected, disguised known Fallon and Carr then, Muldoon reflects within a vintage Irish squeeze box. But the how Tara Telephone proved "partly Ireland's once was an exotic import. Now, it answer to the Liverpool poets, partly to a blends into many traditional arrangements. question no one had ever thought to ask, even Similarly, Horslips presents what at the drop of in an age of matching suits and ties". (2007: the record needle and just before its rise sound 137) Nuala O'Connor imagines their heirs as if sluggish standbys. The album begins and “Horslips” as compounding with ends with an accordion's wheeze and grunting slipjigs, but the band's true derivation defines gents, but the swirling textures of what these its own shotgun wedding. (2001: 129) instrumental snippets frame as the album's Paul Muldoon recalls how his mother main tracks inject bold psychedelic electronics, became besotted with the band's sex appeal. He immersed in Irish tradition. credits the surname of their first guitarist, The record's hexagonal design replicated Declan Sinnott, as embodying their image. stones that Finn McCool trod at his giant "The idea of sinning or not sinning was causeway. The concept of the inner vs. the somehow in the air, particularly since the outer sleeve combines glam and folk, band's name itself seemed, in one intellection, and venerable reels. This to be a pun on 'whore's lips'" (2007: 136). He blossomed into a full-fledged concept sequel, also compares them to cowslips and oxlips, enriching urban-rural, amplified-acoustic "but, again, in a perverse way". Their real clashes. They added to their musical mix both origin? Drinking at a Chinese restaurant, historical inspiration and mythopoeic vision. bandmembers mangled "Four Horsemen of the The apparent roots of the second album, "The Apocalypse". This spoonerism stuck, and the Táin", tap into a 1972 proposal to back a band found its curious name. production of the Táin Bó Cualnge at the Horslips challenged the norm not only in Abbey Theatre. This remained a stillborn nomenclature. Dynamism characterized their project, apparently. But, Horslips generated an organization. Three of them met as interlinked sequence of instrumental and sung copywriters; they could better Leopold Bloom passages about the Cycle. as, in Muldoon's phrase, "the literary Whether or not the Abbey meant to present embodiment of the newfangled Irish the Táin in modern setting or medieval dress, advertising man" (2007:137). They supervised Horslips premiered the tale on vinyl and in illustration, production, promotion, and concert. Their 1973 LP, titled “The Táin”, distribution. Tom Sherlock explains the band's begins with textured whirlwinds as time and impact. “With a strong background in space collapse. Framed in synthesized mist and advertising and graphic design, members of the processed miasma, production phasing band brought a visual awareness and strong recreates a parting of the present curtain that stage presentation to their work and were allows listeners to enter the realm of past myth. pioneers in bringing what was identified as an The LP cover glowered with metallic, Irish form of to a young monochrome contrasts. Muldoon describes the audience not previously exposed to rock front of "The Táin" with its iconic image of "a culture” (Sherlock 2003: 503). In 1972, somewhat anachronistic mailed fist argent on a Horslips' singles and début album from their field sable that owed something to" Louis de homegrown OATS label topped national Brocquy's Táin illustrations for Thomas charts. Kinsella’s translation, but also displayed "the “Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part” set Irish sales regalia of early-onset punk" (2007: 137-138; records. It’s shaped in a die-cut cover template see Kinsella 1970). In album art designed by of Charles O'Connor's concertina. This Charles O’Connor, each of the ten Horslips instrument, once disparaged for being a studio LPs issued between 1972 and 1979 woman's form of accompaniment to traditional peddled a different artifact that delighted in tunes, packaged the contradiction that Horslips overlapping Irish influences – not only 136 musically and lyrically, but graphically. betrayal. This 1976 proves Artwork for their 1975 LP "The Unfortunate relevant to an Irish audience drawn, as the Cup of Tea" expresses the band's sonic band themselves, from multiple allegiances predicament, and their cultural manifesto. The that two waves of troops killed to defend. The inside photo featured the five musicians parallels appear obvious even as the narrative crouched beneath the window of a remains far in the past: Fir Bolg or Tuatha, whitewashed cabin trying to hoist a giant green British or Irish, Republican or Loyalist, native monster, as if pasted from a Marvel comic, or settler. through its tiny window. The album's cover The band, Campbell and Smyth explain, manipulates a stereoscopic image of a courting eschews "a gloss of 'Celtic' authenticity on couple from a sub-Dion Boucicault their music by deploying some specious heroic melodrama. Behind the gurning pair, the green language. Rather the epic imagery ('High on a monster's outraged face grimaces as he spies mountain stands a boat') is set against a level of them through the window. The interior sleeve quotidian experience ('Can't see the fire but we shows the stereotype, doubling message and smell the smoke') which attempts to render the medium, of traditional Ireland. The outer cover essence of the narrative. It is in every sense a situates the band eavesdropping, ready for 'translation' of one world, and the mind-set mischief. They upend a pulp icon into a prop to which sustained it, into another – a sort of satirize audience expectations of Irish dialogue between late twentieth-century performers. The LP's music, less fortunately, Ireland and a number of possible from favored mainstream, slightly progressive but the past" (2005: 58). While critics repeat how less overtly Irish, rock fusion. Horslips stirs folk with rock, observers neglect This direction met with less critical acclaim, to find the recipe for this blend. I trace their as had the previous year's aborted concept ingredients to the post-conciliar decline of album "Dancehall Sweethearts" – alluding to Catholicism in the later 1960s, the loss of Turlough O'Carolan’s travels. (Prendergast patriotism in the guise of its 1916 martyrs, and 1990: 83) Sparking a necessary rejuvenation, the significant groundswell of opposition to Paul Muldoon, producing in 1974 for BBC- compulsory Irish. Horslips whirls at an urban- , recruited Horslips to rural crossroads: au courant with media, pop, compose twenty minutes of theme music for and international fads, manipulating their what Muldoon calls "a souped-up version of presentation under a Celtic guise, which would the Agallamh na Senorach", the fifteenth- seem to tug backwards. Yet, the band resists century Colloquoy of the Ancients (2007: romanticism. They favor subversion. 138). After an acoustic Christmas record, the Horslips, in Campbell and Smyth’s band in 1976 bettered their first entry into formulation, offers a "representation of a world Celtic tales told in the rock idiom. A more undergoing change (ancient Ireland) from a assured 1976 LP, "The Book of Invasions", world (modern Ireland) undergoing its own set presented aspects of Irish legend within, as the of troubles and transformation" (2005: 59). subtitle of the album indicates, "A Celtic Cleary insists that the band's radical music Symphony". This comprises three movements: lacked a corresponding political message. Geantraí, joyous sounds of the Tuatha De Smyth in Noisy Island separates the band from Danann’s triumph over Fir Bolg, goltraí, sad the Troubles. I argue that the removal in time songs of Diarmaid and Grainne, and suantraí, from the contentions of the Knights of the Red sleeping strains after the Tuatha’s Tailteann Branch or the Tuatha de Danaan allows defeat. Horslips to comment upon their fellow Irish Seán Campbell and Gerry Smyth select its men and women locked in mortal combat as if song “Trouble with a Capital ‘T’” as that Irish epic heroes mirroring ourselves. Horslips does hit best representative of 1976. Examining its not praise such struggle, but they evoke its title, they aver that the word "trouble" was strife. Unable to deny its presence, they report used neither by Tuatha de Danann nor Fir Bolg it – as would a herald, a chronicler, or a bard. "when referring to problems encountered in Horslips emphasizes mortal frailty overseen Ireland two and half millennia ago" (2005: 58). by cosmic detachment. Horslips, obliquely This criticism remains true – if to the point of commenting in my reading of their albums pedantry. But Horslips, as Muldoon hints in his upon the tensions in the North, refuses to flee essay, meant The Troubles too. The LP from Irish soil into Tír-na-nÓg. Muldoon featured imperialism, resistance, and reflects that the band appeared at a moment 137 when young Northern Irish students such as Enniskillen. The narrator loves both Horslips himself associated Paisley more with fashion and punk, Irish traditional and heavy metal than the Reverend Ian, and Pandemonium with music. Tellingly named – combining the Irish the action on the dancefloor, not at barricades. saint's name given the son of a Liverpool-born Yet, Horslips weathered the escalation of the Irish immigrant, known as Elvis Costello, with Troubles with the 1970s while refusing faction the -originated surname of another fighting or fleeing into escapist fantasy. musician known as Johnny Rotten – Declan The representative cover of "The Unfortunate Lydon even christens what he calls a “bedroom Cup of Tea", with its green comic book figure rock band which would never actually leave shoved by the band up against a cabin window the house”. He “baptises” himself and his pal, to gawp at a couple of stagy Irish from a the only two members, as “Furniture”. Declan stereoscopic stereotype, stylizes the band's explains: “Not only was this the title of a very intention. They controlled representation of long Horslips song that we would never be their hybrid 1970s Irish identity. The able to play, but it was also an in-joke about counterculture – as Carr himself recalls being the wardrobe that only our fans would ever inspired by the underground London paper Oz get” (2004: 94-95). – allowed participants to choose their variety Later, at Queen’s University, Declan places of Irishness. Horslips liberated their audience a framed photo of Horslips on the nightstand from allegiance to sectarian shibboleths. This of his lonely Belfast bedsit. He hopes to use freedom animates John Kelly's account, the picture to seduce a girl, if one ever enters Sophisticated Boom-Boom, about coming of his room. He imagines she can name the whole age while metal battled with punk, and pop band, and that her favorite record would be with disco, for the attentions of 1970s their début, “Happy to Meet”. He will lie to her teenagers. Growing up in the garrison town of about seeing them “on long summer nights at Enniskillen, twelve-year-old Declan Lydon the Astoria Ballroom in Bundoran” (2004: seeks escape into music. But, he remains too 154). This contrasts with reality. Earlier, such young to enter the venues where Horslips plays reveries resulted in failure in his hometown across the border in Bundoran. The band disco; the girl liked neither Horslips nor him. represents a vision of Irish culture that liberates Earlier, supporting Herr’s thesis about the 1970s youth from political antagonism or movement from exterior exposure to new sectarian restrictions. Kelly, through his alter music followed by interior introspection that ego Declan, describes how Horslips opened the leads to compulsive disc-spinning and air- door for his exit out of the Troubles into the posing before the bedroom mirror, musical counterculture. Declan at twelve attended a “Jamborora ‘77” at Cheryl Herr interprets the “gendering of the Mount Melleray monastery in County music scene” in the 1950s, alter – to lift a Waterford. This musical festival marked the phrase from the Vétales – “the English Army (fictional) centennial of the Irish Boy Scouts. had just won the war”. British and Irish In a chapter called “The Book of Invasions,” adolescent boys, Herr argues, suddenly grasp Declan anticipates his first glimpse of the pop music as if by “a benign physical band, as he has been too young to see them compulsion”. They become grounded in local during their regular cross-border gigs at and cultural placement by dislocating Bundoran. For too long, he has heard the themselves. Growing up, boys abandon their prefects at his school boast of hearing the band. roots. They seek an alternative way to inhabit The conjunction of Scout jamboree and the self. Often, this quest locks them up in their open-air concert allows Declan his chance to bedroom, where they listen obsessively to meet the band. “And so it happened that a music so as to create their own “stories for long-haired glam band called Horslips became boys” (Herr 2007). an actual presence in my life and really did Kelly’s novel, cited in passing by Herr, change everything for the better” (2004: 34). devotes attention to Horslips. My analysis Perched at the lip of the stage, “I was as deepens her reading of as a grateful as a boy could be. And Horslips did subversive, defiantly sub-cultural, and not laugh or put me down, they smiled back decidedly detached arena of contest for and welcomed me to their glamorous Celtic younger Irish. Sophisticated Boom-Boom world”. This entry into an imaginative identity, follows the antics of one such rock-addled rooted in yet removed from the everyday youth , in late-1970s and early-1980s tedium felt by every adolescent and heightened 138 by the constant tension of his Northern Irish but ancient tales enlivened by electricity and town near the divided border, detaches Declan bravado. Such a quest began when Horslips from his environment. It frees him to find entertained a crowd of ten thousand Scouts solace and gain energy from earlier inspirations from all over the world. Joe Cleary based on legend and language. Horslips distinguishes the band's "undoubtably enlivens his heritage and quickens his own aesthetically radical" music from "any quest to find his allegiances outside the corresponding political radicalism". (2007: conquests attempted near his occupied 274). This entry into a non-sectarian field, I hometown, near the contested frontier. argue, allows their triumph for Declan and his Declan Lydon when travelling on the bus to fellow Scouts. The band toured throughout the Queen's will be interrogated as a suspect rural North of Ireland even at the time of the republican based solely on his name and his Miami Showband massacre, yet found birthplace. While he does not deny these facts, themselves far less often threatened than he, like Horslips, attempts to transcend welcomed accordingly. Their conquest stays religious identification or superficial links to a peaceful, while their music remains a raucous surname or a school. Instead of badges based recital of earlier bloodshed – but now glossed on chapel or church, Declan and his fellow and polished by the passage of millennia. “And students display buttons boasting bands. These so, at twilight Jamborora ’77, with punk raging fans will enter a "bubble", that in the mid- in London and Elvis about to die in Memphis, 1980s allows them to leave Belfast behind. our battlefield landscape of tents, flags, and They create an alternative Ulster, one loyal to a smoking fires began to boom with the sound of republic of song and dance rather than crown funked-up, rocked-up reels, , set dances, or clergy. and marches”. The Troubles with a Capital “T” Sophisticated Boom-Boom mingles the return, but this invasion thunders far from the origin myths of Enniskillen with Declan’s own contemporary strife, as the scouts gathered family tree. His maturity parallels that of an assemble in uniforms for adolescent order Irish generation able to form its own musically rather than martial mayhem. expansive and artistically generated “bubble” The music releases Declan from his within which, at Queens, to live outside the inhibitions as he begins to enter manhood, Northern sectarian barriers. While the Troubles revamping a key signifier of his scout uniform do not diminish, Declan speaks for a vision of into a sign of his fanatical membership in another island, separatist in its own Celtic another mass movement, but one claimed by Revival. Declan quotes Éamon Carr’s men rather than boys. “I faced into the setting annotations within the album copy for “The sun, tied my neckerchief around my head and Book of Invasions”, released the year before opened my arms wide to Barry Devlin’s spine- "Jamborora '77". “’Honourable in defeat’, went trembling bass as it rumbled like escaping fear the sleeve notes, ‘the Tuatha retired to a hidden into my own guts. It was glorious” (2004: 35). world parallel to ours where life, immortal, The play-acting of the boys in the crowd goes on as before”. (2004: 35) Similarly, merges with the five men on stage. Declan Declan will grow up to find music that describes each member of the band as they nourishes his own complex Irish identity, performed, including “the skeletal Eamonn whether a local , free jazz imported from [sic] Carr, scary like one of the living dead, America, ’s Celtic soul, the thundering behind the silvery kit”. London Irish punk sung by John Lydon and Such revels lead to Declan’s own ambitions. Elvis Costello (neé Declan Patrick McManus), True to the pattern charted by Herr, however, or Dublin rockers such as Thin Lizzy, whose the boy must pursue his rock star dreams in iconic album covers illustrated by Jim private and in poverty. The postwar austerity Fitzpatrick trace their roots back in turn to his that characterized Britain still pinches Ireland, work for the broadsheet co-edited by Eamon so the Lydon family has little money. He must Carr, itself titled “The Book of Invasions”. Out settle for a , yet it allows him to of such spirals, stories emerge. chirp out “Dearg Doom” – “and that meant you Within such encounters, Declan forges his could play a Horslips tune – and that was the loyalty, not to contemporary political causes, coolest thing I could ever imagine” (2004: 36).

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The chapter concludes as “soon my bedroom by adding a definite article what precedes the was the Astoria Ballroom itself, and I was up band's noun in that curious coinage favored by there throwing shapes with Barry, Charles and many fans. Yet, as long as nobody knows what Johnny beside me, Jim in the distance to my a Horslips may be, making a collective or left and, behind me, Eamon in his black string plural entity out of five musicians underscores vest, hammering away at the kit.” Declan joins their ambiguity in Irish musical culture. the band, and enters stardom from behind his “Horslips” hints at apocrypha but eludes bedroom’s closed door. “I was suddenly, definition. finally, able to leave, to travel, to escape as far This playful quality in the band delighted as Bundoran and back and sometimes even concertgoers, but it weakened studio further than that as I played along with records recordings. Malachy sees them in Carrick (a bought at Gannon’s – a musical pharmacy small venue perhaps near Waterford); two which smelled of a million perfumes, years later, they play Dublin’s National aftershaves and rubbery hot-water bottles” Stadium. Horslips shot from showband misfits (2004: 36). The mundane mingles with the to arena strutters. Paul Muldoon finds in “The musical. Declan can elevate another ware Táin”’s mailed fist a proto-punk image. But, as bought at the corner chemist into the mystique three-chord 45s replaced arena epics, longhairs of identity that crosses borders, transcends the shrieking over dungeons and druids turned ordinary, and traffics in the mystery shared by risible. Progressive rock fell from critical fragrances. Even rubber bottles, like vinyl LPs, favor. transform the quotidian into the mythical, or at Pat McCabe’s Malachy Dudgeon, down and least the familiar made strange, as the musical out in Dublin then London, shuffles about. artifacts and the chemist's sundries blend in an Booted from his schoolteacher post, on the almost Joycean collision of everyday dole, stoned, he wanders Piccadilly Circus: Enniskillen with enchanted but less "Punk music blared from the jukebox and all commodified Araby. about Malachy orange-haired youths in tartan 1970s tension between Troubles reaction or struck poses and snarled at nothing. Malachy musical retreat entered cultural as well as felt the warm, comforting arms of four pints political debate. Paul Muldoon situates around him and smiled as he looked at himself Horslips where “bodhran-lined boreen” in the mirror. His long, lank, greasy hair was crossed “the rocky road to Dublin that seemed way past his shoulders. Sure it was crazy to be likely to run into Route 66” (2007: 139). The wearing a green army surplus greatcoat on a road from the North into Dublin lures the hot summer's day, blazing or otherwise, as he protagonist of Patrick McCabe's 1995 novel ordered another pint and said to the punk The Dead School. Malachy Dudgeon in 1973, beside him 'The Clash, that's not music, man. around the time of "The Táin”’s release, Horslips – now there's a band, there's a fucking attends a gig. The omniscient but indirectly band, man!'" (1995: 244-245). Horslips, who first-person narrator informs us how: "Horslips had like Malachy begun the decade filled with were jigs and reels on speed as you boogied all radical dreams, and who along with the band night long and went half-crazy shaking your left humble origins in Dublin for mid-decade head and Kevin Connolly yelled over at you professional success, declined by decade's end. 'Shakin' All Over!' and man were you shouting Malachy's once revolutionary appearance in all over or what!" (1995: 58). This passage 1970 by 1980 looks anachronistic. Youth who during what Malachy calls the Summer of flocked to Horslips at a club in Summer of Dreams reveals the intoxicating potential of Dreams 1973, or National Stadium 1975, by rock music for Irish youth. summer 1980 tended to be, as with Muldoon or Eamon Carr's remark that the Sixties came Malachy, fans who had grown up with the late to Dublin jibes with Kelly, McCabe and band. Many in Declan Lydon's generation Muldoon. All four writers celebrate Horslips in raised to denigrate hippies and pose as punks concert. Malachy in 1975 imagines Horslips on aped not stone idols but Billy Idol. While stage. "He thought of them sitting together in Horslips adapted new waves of music and The Stadium, the crowd going wild as Eamon fashion, their time had passed and, albeit in Carr appeared with the shamrock on his better shape than Malachy, they too entered backside and Barry Devlin the bass player early retirement. shouting "Hi! It's good to be here – we're The As with Malachy, the band endured abuse. Horslips!" (1995: 244-245). McCabe spells out and the Village Voice excoriated 140

American releases of later albums. Folk In 2005 a fan site, Come Back Horslips, filigrees soured rock purists; electric delivery debuted. Here, electric and acoustic folk and repelled traditional players. Ciaran Carson, rock musicians enlarge Horslips’ invention of poet and musician, in 1986 mocked: “Others Irish dúchas as fusion. CBH as social network persisted in tinkering with the basic structures links fans, broadcasts film and musical clips, of the music, most noticeably when their and updates the craic. Virtual and real lives traditional experience was minimal (Horslips, merge. Encouraged by such attention, Horslips for example); bastardised genres like ‘folk- released an “unplugged” album, "". rock’ were announced as inspired creative They reunited for the first time on stage. achievements” (1986: 53). During the punk Horslips’ pioneering diversity encourages and and new-wave era, Horslips languished as exemplifies current Irish postcolonial identity. passé. From around the world, sound files, press kits, By the end of the 1990s, Horslips’ reputation video, discussion lists, and publicity campaigns recovered. Legal battles over unapproved blend multimedia enriching this band’s legacy. recordings ended. The band controlled their In 2007, HorsLit, a discussion list of literary own records, as they had in the early 1970s. A influences, began on Yahoo Groups. CBH and teen musician back then, Philip Chevron, HorsLit, under Lora Lee Templeton's direction founded Dublin's first punk-era success, The from San Francisco, draw fans of Irish music, Radiators from Space. He hated " and Celtic culture, and medieval lore. Horslips Irish music generally", but hearing Horslips, once mashed folk and rock into a fresh recipe. his attitude changed (O'Connor, 2001: 131). Social networking and user-generated content Critical convention may have for two decades drive today’s mixers. Bands post files of dismissed them, but recent players, fans, and Horslips songs; musicians recover traditional critics joined stalwart supporters. Remastered tunes that Horslips arranged. The exchange of CDs and the rise of Internet fan sites around ideas, lyrics, and commentary brings at least 2000 widened their appeal across the diaspora. one band member into the Guestbook chat for a In Spring 2004, an exhibition of memorabilia cryptic allusion or witty aside. Three-dozen appeared at 's Orchard Gallery. That same years later, Horslips revives virtually through year, the Belfast Telegraph reported that "local electronic hybrids. people are being urged to take part in an intense Electronics resonate when charting the series of peace building workshops based around band's impact. Maurice Linnane, Declan the legend of ChuChulainn [sic]. The cross Lydon’s real-life doppelganger at twelve, heard community workshops will examine the Celtic "The Táin". When the band sang: "My love is tale of the Ulster folklore hero and the Tain, in a colder than black marble by the sea", Linnane bid to explore the relevance and lessons of recognized the landscape that until then had ancient local myth for people today". The project been Christian Brothers history class and aimed “to show the madness of war and the "confusingly part fable and part scripture". He benefits of healing through creativity". ("Peace recalled basalt, and imagined the Giant's Building") According to its organizer, John Causeway as "Dearg Doom" rumbled on. A Donaghey: "This is a very powerful workshop familiar schoolroom story gained intensity. examining the demands of the tribe versus the "This was something far deeper", Linnane authority of the heart. ChuChulainn is someone recalls. "This was something raw, something who has been hailed as a hero and an icon by primitive, something primordial". Even more, both republicans and loyalists". This cross-border Horslips bettered a dull class in Irish, for appeal lured fans from all over Ireland to venues "Sweet Jesus this was actually cool!" (Linnane as disparate and scattered as Bundoran or Mount 2005). His recollections introduce liner notes Melleray or Whitla Hall to see the band play. for his 2005 DVD "Return of the Dancehall Horslips sang of an Irish identity where all fans Sweethearts". This combines vintage footage could share a homegrown sense of Irish pride, with a documentary in which Bono, The Edge, send-up Oirish stereotypes as did Carr “with the John Kelly, Pat McCabe, Joe O'Connor, and shamrock on his backside”, and cheer together John Waters, among other prominent Dublin- the lusts and combats of ancient superheroes. based writers and musicians, credit the band This embrace of an audience beyond for sketching the blueprint for today's Celtic conventional spectators of Irish traditional music revival of art and culture. in turn extends into the cyberspace venue opened Horslips allowed young audiences to up for Horslips during this current decade. appreciate the power of old tales, as had Seán 141

Ó Riada before and after them. appeared alongside "Blindman," a tune Muldoon concludes his essay on the Belfast celebrating harpist Turlough O'Carolan, and Gigs, waiting for their 1980 Whitla Hall another recounting Frank O'Connor's "Guests concert in the band's final year. Muldoon of the Nation". conjures Milton, Yeats, and Scripture as he The band's literary and cultural influences tells us: "There was a howling that came close shared the Belfast stage with their musical and to Pandemonium in its strictest sense. Any lyrical invention. The band in its ten years moment there'd be a great disclosure. Some spanning the Seventies played over two revelation was at hand. We'd see if Horslips thousand concerts. They opened among hippies were indeed 'gods or real folk'. Yes . . . one by and closed for headbangers. But their finest one they came on stage, each with a following albums matched the sway of accessible rock spot. Just as we'd expected (…) gods" (2007: music with the grace of traditional motifs. 140). Horslips reminded Irish listeners how ancient The final LP, titled "The Belfast Gigs'", tales and medieval narratives kept a magical captured what would have happened next at power of their own, within the simmering Whitla Hall. The live album opened with the South or the fractured North. Wherever song "Trouble with a Capital 'T'", and ended Horslips played, Celtic variety and Irish with "Dearg Doom". These two songs were identity energized them. promoted off the LP for radio play, along with the one that dragged Malachy Dudgeon and Portions of this research were presented at the Kevin Connolly onto the dance floor in Patrick Twenty-First Conference of Irish Medievalists, McCabe's novel. The choice that Declan Lydon Mary Immaculate College, University of would have played tin whistle and air guitar to, , 28 June 2007, and the International of one-hit wonder Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' Association for the Study of Irish Literatures "Shakin' All Over", matched the other songs (IASIL), University College Dublin, 19 July from the concept albums as a crowd favorite. 2007. Acknowledgements for archival Whether singing of the Ulster Cycle or a assistance and interviews to a member of beloved throwaway dance number from the Horslips, Dorrie Finan, Ian Hennessy of band's teenaged years, Horslips to the end Crashed Music, Cheryl Herr, Matt Hunt, conveyed Irish themes through rock's thunder. Brona ní Ghallchobhair, Cathy Swift, Carrie The song, "King of the Fairies", whose Twomey, HorsLit Yahoo discussion list, bastardization would earn disdain from www.Horslips.ie, ComeBackHorslips.com and Muldoon's fellow poet, Ciaran Carson, the indefatigable Lora Lee Templeton.

Works Cited Campbell, Seán, 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 : A Secret History. London: Cherry Red. Herr, Cheryl. 2007. “Stories for Boys”. Keynote Lecture. International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. University College Dublin. 20 July. Kelly, John. Sophisticated Boom-Boom. 2004 (2003). London: Vintage. Kinsella, Thomas, tr. The Táin. 1970. Oxford: Oxford UP. Linnane, Maurice. 2005. “The Return of the Dancehall Sweethearts”. Liner notes. DVD. Horslips Records. 142

McCabe, Patrick. 1995. The Dead School. New York: Dial. Muldoon, Paul. 2007. “The Horslips at the Whitla Hall, Belfast, Ireland, April 1980”. The Show I’ll Never Forget. Ed. Seán Manning. New York: Da . 135-140. O’Connor, 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. Martin’s. 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.