Paul Cleary’s Blades are still sharp as they return for another Olympia date

The feud with U2 may have been a myth, but there’s a lingering feeling that Paul Cleary’s band should have been megastars, writes Ed Power

U2 VERSUS The Blades has gone down as among the greatest feuds in Irish rock history. In one corner, four stadium overlords in waiting. In the other, a scrappy punk crew destined to burn brightly and briefly. According to popular mythology, these two opposing forces spent much of the early 1980s at one another’s throats. It’s a rollicking story — with one small catch. It is almost entirely untrue.

“I took some potshots at U2 in interviews,” says Paul Cleary, The Blades’ hard-bitten and still straight-talking frontman. “That was about the extent of it. My atheism clashed with their Christian beliefs. The nearer to success they got, the more I resented it. But U2 were always good back then, even in soundchecks. They definitely had something.”

As had The Blades, whose taut new-wave pop articulated what it was to be young and alienated in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland better than any of their contemporaries. The Blades were wildly beloved at the time, building a loyal following in Dublin and across the country (some of Cleary’s fondest memories are of performing to a heaving Arcadia Ballroom in Cork). Now, after decades away, they’re back, with a new EP and a pre-Christmas gig at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.

“U2 was never my sort of music,” says Cleary, a flinty 50-something whose youthful rage has matured into a sardonic scepticism. “There wasn’t really any cross-pollination between our fanbases. Very few people liked U2 and The Blades — except for Dave Fanning maybe.”

The groups’ paths would diverge sharply, with U2 becoming rock juggernauts and The Blades suffering the fate of all domestic bands who fail to make it out of Ireland — that purgatorial slide into diminishing record sales and a shrinking fanbase.

“We were kind of the Pete Best of Irish rock,” says Cleary, laughing, a reference to the drummer who played with The Beatles prior to Ringo Starr and who spent the rest of his life contemplating what might have been. “I haven’t got a problem with that.”

That doomy prognosis isn’t entirely accurate. The Blades were never exactly forgotten. As memories of Dublin’s punk years acquired the glow of nostalgia through the ’90s and beyond, so The Blades’ reputation grew in stature. Had things played out slightly differently, went received wisdom, they might also have been an Irish band to conquer the world. Thus, when in 2013 Clearly announced he was reforming the band for two nights at Dublin’s Olympia, he was pushing on an open door.

“We sold out The Olympia — and then we did a second night,” he recalls. “I never thought we’d do two nights. That knocked me for six.”

Two years later, the reunion has stepped up a notch, with The Blades putting out The Smalltime EP — their first new recorded music in over 30 years.

Cleary says: “I suppose I have a reputation to live up to as a songwriter. It didn’t weigh on me. I’m at an age where those things don’t bother you. I’m confident enough to know I can write a song. It doesn’t mean I’m arrogant enough to think everyone will like what I can do. But I wasn’t overly concerned about legacy. It didn’t hold me back.”

Cleary formed The Blades in 1977, with younger brother Larry on bass and childhood friend Pat Larkin on drums. Their first concert, at a Catholic Young Men’s Society in Ringsend, was cut dramatically short when they played a cover of The Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’. The owners of the hall took it to be a cranked-up version of the British national anthem and literally pulled the plug. Far from feeling disheartened, Cleary took enormous encouragement from the incident.

The Blades had upset the moral guardians of ‘Official’ Ireland, ergo they must be doing something right. The following year, they announced themselves to the nation with a blistering performance of ‘Hot For You’ on The Late Late Show.

What followed was one of the most impressive streaks in Irish rock, as chronicled by classic singles such as ‘Ghost Of A Chance’, ‘The Bride Wore White’, and ‘Revelations of Heartbreak’.

But Cleary was too headstrong to play the game or butter up the right people. His world view — a sort of bloody-minded, damn the torpedoes romanticism — was encapsulated by The Blades’ refusal to perform at Self Aid in 1986 (Cleary dubbed it a “backslapping” love-in). Instead, the group headlined a socialist concert at Liberty Hall. It was the ultimate rock and roll gesture. Yet it wasn’t enough to save the band, who fractured soon afterwards.

Cleary never regarded the decades that followed as his wilderness years. He formed the pub-rock outfit The Partisans and earned a living as a jobbing session player (supplemented by a second career writing questions for the RTÉ youth quiz show Blackboard Jungle). There were few regrets: He was proud of the band’s achievements, philosophical about their premature demise.

He was persuaded to reform The Blades after appearing at the August 2013 Olympia Theatre musical testimonial of Pogues guitarist Philip Chevron (who would die of cancer shortly afterwards). On the night, Cleary performed a song by Chevron’s band The Radiators From Space, and one of his own. The response startled him slightly.

“It was really well-received. I had always liked the Olympia so I put in some calls to see if we could do a gig of our own. That was how it all started.”

Still, he was never desperate to revive The Blades. He’d been happy to set that part of his life on a shelf. One gets the sense he would have the same attitude tomorrow.

“I never pined for it,” he says of his years away from rock music. “If a band doesn’t work out, you can’t crawl under your bed. Let’s face it, the vast majority of bands don’t work out. So you just have to stick your chest out and get on with life.”

The Blades play the Olympia, Dublin, on Saturday. The Smalltime EP is out now on Reekus Records