'A great sense of relief': Frankie Gavin on making up with estranged bandmate Alec Finn before he died
Alec Finn and Frankie Gavin in their De Dannan days.
“An awful pity and a waste of a great lifelong friendship” is Frankie Gavin’s reflection on his infamous split with fellow Dé Danann founder member Alec Finn.
Following the 2003 break-up of the trad super-group, the pair’s wrangle over the use of the band’s name came to a head in 2009 in a storm of solicitors’ letters and copyright claims, with a wider circle of musicians becoming embroiled in a very public spat on RTÉ’s Liveline programme.
Happily, the pair were eventually reconciled, playing on stage together for the first time in 14 years at the 2017 Cork Folk Festival launch of former Dé Danann accordion player Aidan Coffey’s album ‘The Corner House Set’.
Finn also made a guest appearance as Gavin accepted the 2018 Gradam Ceoil TG4 and, more than 40 years after their first fiddle and bouzouki album, the pair released their second duet recording only weeks before Finn passed away in November that year.
“We had spent a number of years of silence and for no really good reason, which was an awful pity and a waste of a great lifelong friendship,” says Gavin, adding that the reconciliation brought “a great sense of relief all round”.
“Anyone who is in that kind of a situation, where people go their opposite ways, it’s really the wrong thing and people should make the effort and come together,” he counsels. “We were lucky to do that with the help of a number of friends.”
This month, along with a number of other trad music friends, Gavin returns to Cork to perform in a concert paying tribute to Finn and fellow bouzouki player Seán Ó Loingsigh, who passed away just five months before Finn, in June 2018.
It is indicative of the assimilation of the Greek instrument into Irish traditional music that only half a century after its introduction, this country is celebrating the legacy of two members of its first generation of home-grown bouzouki players.
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Gavin has played alongside not only Finn and Ó Loingsigh but fellow noted Irish exponents of the instrument Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny, and the man credited with the Greek bouzouki’s Irish trad debut in the 1960s, former Dé Dannan member Johnny Moynihan.
Gavin’s first duet album with Finn did much to establish the instrument in the Irish music vernacular, their bouzouki-fiddle partnership becoming a defining characteristic of Dé Danann’s music.
“The first album that I did with Alec in 76 or 77 [recorded] in New York in an afternoon, was a very new thing at the time, particularly because of Alec’s playing,” says Gavin.
“It was certainly the first fiddle and bouzouki album, and that bouzouki-playing gave Dé Danann its distinctive sound - when he and I did stuff together it was a unique flavour of the music.
“He was one of the most extraordinary people, apart from being a great musician. I worked with Alec for about 48 or 49 years,” he adds.
“We got to do another album together about six months before he passed away and our friendship was renewed. It was terrific, a great sense of relief to both of us really.” Finn, born in Yorkshire to Galway parents, moved back to Ireland, playing blues guitar with the Cana band in Dublin before heading west to Spiddal.
He took up the bouzouki almost by accident after asking a friend to bring him back a Grecian laouto from a trip to Crete. When a bouzouki arrived instead, Finn adopted it during the music sessions from which Dé Danann was formed, developing his own instinctive way of phrasing and embellishing tunes with counter-melodies.
“It’s a beautiful enhancement to the music,” says Gavin of the style created by Finn on his Greek round-backed trichordo instrument and since emulated by many musicians. “Alec would be just sort of weaving around the notes and not dictating any sort of rhythm at all.
“I love the way the bouzouki colours in the music in a very subtle way, particularly if it’s in the style of Alec,” he says, adding the names of Mick Conneely, George Grasso, and Rory McGorman to the list of pioneers of the style.
Finn also influenced Seán Ó Loingsigh, a Cork journalist and multi-instrumentalist who recorded with the likes of Charlie Piggott and Gerry Harrington, Connie O’Connell, Conal Ó Gráda, Eoin Ó Riabhaigh, Séamus Creagh, and Aidan Coffey.
“I think Seán would certainly have followed in the footsteps of Alec - and he did a fine job,” says Gavin. “He played an eight-string bouzouki in the same style. It was very hard to get that particular style off unless you studied Alec’s playing.
“Alec used to play with three pairs of DAD [strings] whereas Seán would play GDAD, which would make his playing sound a wee bit different.
“I did a good few gigs with Seán Ó Loingsigh and Joe Burke,” he adds. “Seán had stopped playing music for a long time but I used to know him very, very well.
“I used to meet him in Dublin. There was a pub there on the quays called the Man of Aran, owned by a friend of mine from Galway, Frank Twomey, so I used to meet Seán there on a fairly regular basis, and I’d meet him down in Cúil Aodha at Éigse Dhiarmuid Uí Shúilleabháin.
“He was quite a character. He had a fantastic sense of humour and was a great man to tell stories as well.” Flute-player Conal Ó Gráda whose musical association with Ó Loingsigh began in their teens, shared a house with his fellow Corkman in Ballymun in the 1980s while both were immersed in the capital’s music scene. “Slattery’s in Capel St was a big one, the Meeting Place, the Harcourt Hotel, and Seán and myself used to play with the Glackins – Kevin and Séamus,” he recalls. “We had a band actually, called the Pride of Erin Quartet – myself and Kevin Glackin, Pádraig Mac Mathúna, and Seán.”
Ó Loingsigh, who played bouzouki on Ó Gráda’s 1990 album ‘Top of Coom’, also accompanied piper Liam O’Flynn and accordion player Finbarr Dwyer. He was an accomplished pianist and whistle-player, his unwavering sense of rhythm earning him the nickname ‘The Train’.
“He had a great appreciation of melody, so when he was playing bouzouki he knew exactly what he was playing to,” says Ó Gráda. “He had lovely chords as well and he’d also double down on that rhythm, as you came in around the corner he’d be chugging along right next to you. There was a lovely sense of camaraderie playing with Seán.”
- The music of Ó Loingsigh, who passed away at the age of 58, will be celebrated along with that of Finn in an online concert streamed by Ionad Cultúrtha an Dochtúir Ó Loingsigh this month. Dé Danann bodhrán player Colm Murphy, who instigated the concert and whose exhibition of paintings is currently on display at the Baile Mhúirne arts centre, will play in a line-up including Ó Gráda, Gavin, Eoin Ó Riabhaigh, Nell Ní Chróinín, Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, and Garry Ó Briain. See: ionadculturtha.ie for date updates, due to Covid-19 restrictions.
