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Irish Daily Mail, Thursday, April 5, 2012 Page 15 The first Horslips album exploded on the scene 40 years ago, but its vivid reworking of traditional music still has the power to thrill CELTIC DAWN by Paul it was, in hindsight, to be the mu- sic’s salvation. The group’s name was based on a Drury smartarse Dublin mispronunciation of The Four Horsemen of the Apoca- lypse – The Four Poxmen on the T BURST, exactly 40 Horslypse. years ago, on to a But there was nothing smart- arse or dismissively urban torpid Ireland of about the music. It was tuxedo-clad rooted in the Irish coun- showbands and tryside – the jigs, reels, Aran-jumpered polkas and slow airs that balladeers with all the those of us who grew up in the 1960s had rejected Iforce and intensity of as old-fashioned and fud- a thunderstorm. dy-duddy. Never judge a book by its Now here was a rock cover, they say. Or, for that band – with long hair, matter, a record by its Frank Zappa moustach- sleeve. However, this one es, flares and platform didn’t just look different. It shoes – taking that music was different. You knew as and giving it, quite liter- much without even hearing ally, an electrifying new a note. twist. What’s more, it was Irish. Nor was it all make-be- It looked as distinctively lieve Celtic Twilight guff Irish as the music inside – although there was a sounded Irish. But – and fair sprinkling of that. this to those of us who were Two of the songs on Hap- teenagers in 1972 was the py to Meet, Sorry to Part amazing bit – it was also are traditional Irish folk- rock ‘n’ roll. songs, sung in very cred- At the age of 15, it was the itable Irish. Several of the first album I ever bought. I tunes were learned from had saved up my pocket Séamus Ennis himself. money for weeks in advance All the while, of course, in order to march proudly other artistes were draw- into Pat Egan’s Sound ing from the traditional Cellar on Nassau Street in repertoire to plough a Dublin one Saturday morn- somewhat more faithful, ing and demand my fresh, more purist furrow. But it cellophane-clad copy. is no coincidence that the Four decades later, I still have second album I myself bought, that LP. a year after Happy to Meet, Sor- It has followed me through years of ry to Part in 1973, was Planxty’s exile in London and Brussels and debut LP. My taste buds, once stim- back to Ireland – its surface now ulated, craved more. And once again, scratched and worn but the music I was not alone. itself as vibrant and drivingly rhyth- mic as ever. I know because I still play it – and still get the same buzz I making it did all those years ago when I got the fastest- roups like Planxty, home from Pat Egan’s on the 48A Unique: selling album the novel Clannad, Dé Danann bus and put it on my father’s old in the history of and the Bothy Band Philips turntable. the Irish recording 1972 sleeve would undoubtedly have It is called Happy to Meet, Sorry to industry. of ‘Happy h a p p e n e d w i t h o u t Part and it was the debut album Once memorably de- to Meet..’ Horslips. But they would never have from a group formed just two years scribed as a cross be- enjoyed such success. Nor do I earlier, in 1970, by three likely lads G tween T Rex and the Tulla believe that it is any coincidence who worked for Dublin advertising Céilí Band, Horslips tend that I myself went on to acquire an agency Arks. nowadays to be referred to as ‘the interest not just in the music but in original Celtic rockers’ – which, of the Irish language – an interest that course, they were. has endured to this day. But that is a bit like describing Horslips themselves were very SKed to be a pretend The Beatles as ‘the original Mersey- much a creature of the 1970s. As band in a Harp lager TV side fourpiece’. that decade went on, they gradually ad, they enjoyed them- To most of us now fiftysomething- moved more into conventional heavy selves so much they year-old Irishmen and women, rock – with somewhat questionable decided to form a five- Horslips were not just the first Celt- success. piece with some friends and make a ic rockers. They famously disbanded in Bel- Ago of it professionally. They were the very first rockers fast in 1980 when, symbolically, And so Horslips the group was of any description to surface on our Charles O’Connor threw his mashed- born. radar. up fiddle into the heaving audience But it was this seminal album, now True, Thin Lizzy had been formed in the Ulster Hall. rereleased on CD, that really in 1968 and Rory Gallagher was be- For more than a decade, none of spawned the phenomenon that was ginning to blaze his own dazzling their recordings could even be rere- Horslips – and, in so doing, changed international trail. But Horslips did leased because of a legal dispute our insular little Irish world for ever. what neither Lizzy nor Gallagher over copyright. But their influence is Only a year earlier, in April 1971, ever did. felt to this very day. the Rolling Stones had shocked our They brought their pulsating, fre- That Irish teenagers in 2012 can parents’ generation by sticking a netic sound to the barns and parish and do enjoy Irish traditional music working fly zipper on the cover of halls of rural Ireland – places where as much as they revel in rock’n’roll is Sticky Fingers. Now here was an Big Tom and Larry Cunningham had in large part down to those five guys Irish album that also turned the hitherto been just about as exotic as bought, so too Horslips were the wrought a revolution in the way in the flowing robes and the side- conventional concept of a record it got. first rock group I ever saw – in the pundits claim the PDs did – except burns. sleeve – nice picture of the artist on Their smallest ever audience, old Mansion House round room. that people actually liked them. And to an odd-looking, octagonal- the front, biog and brief track list- recalls ex-member Jim Lockhart, I was not alone. Horslips allowed my generation – the sleeved LP that can still set the feet ings on the back – on its head. consisted of 11 skinheads in a hall Horslips gave a whole generation first not to leave Ireland in 130 years tapping and the head banging and But it did much, much more. Just somewhere in darkest Co. Donegal, of Irish teenagers their first taste of – to understand the nature of its de- that deserves its own place in the as the octagonal, cut-out sleeve, where the band played without a PA live rock’n’roll. What’s more, they sires, giving us a glimpse of what history books. cleverly modelled on a traditional on a stage six inches lower than the showed us you did not have to be was possible.’ Irish concertina, so utterly shattered dance floor. English or American to be cool. Equally importantly, however, they The special 40th anniversary CD all known conventions, so too did I never saw Phil Lynott or Rory You could be Irish too – and proud dragged traditional Irish music out version of the album is out now on the album itself. Gallagher live. But I saw Horslips. In of it. of the dark ages and into the world Celtic Airs/Horslips Records, with It sold more than 30,000 copies in fact, just as Happy to Meet, Sorry to of popular culture. five bonus tracks recorded live in the first six weeks of its release – John Waters has put it much bet- Part was the first album I ever ter than I ever could: ‘Horslips Traditionalists were appalled; but Berlin in 1976..

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