Freddie White on early Cork clubs, Rory Gallagher and covering Tom Waits
Freddie White will play at Triskel for Cork Folk Festival.
Freddie White, 69, was born in Cobh, Co Cork. He is one of Ireland’s most admired singer-songwriters and renowned for his interpretation of songs from the likes of Tom Waits and Randy Newman. He came to prominence in the 1970s as part of Scullion and later in the decade with the Freddie White Band. Having spent long stretches living in Sydney and New York, he is living in Ireland again. He will perform at Triskel Christchurch for Cork Folk Festival on Thursday, September 30. Cork. See: www.corkfolkfestival.com
I went to school in Pres [Presentation Brothers College] in Cork until I was kicked out. I wasn't keen on turning up for school, basically.
I spent my last year in St Kieran’s College on the Quays. It was affectionately known as “The School for Dropouts” at the time. I did a pretty poor Leaving Cert and then absconded on the boat to London for three or four years.
I met Jimmy McCarthy [singer-songwriter who went on to compose Ride On, etc] in first year in Pres. We were in the same class. We started a band together with his brother who was a year ahead of us. I was 13. The band was called Beethoven. I used to play the bass on a cheap, acoustic guitar. We did one gig in the ICA Hall in Douglas.
I remember Jimmy dancing around the place like a raving lunatic, doing the full Mick Jagger. It was a complete shock to me. We had rehearsed in his house mainly, but we never saw that in rehearsal – he became the total rock ’n’ roll star.
A few years later, a couple of guys in Douglas where I lived overheard me playing guitar in my bedroom and knocked on the door one day and said, “Would you like to join a band?” Our band became known as The Crux. We started playing in The Cavern Club [on Leitrim St.] in Cork every Friday night.
We were hired as support for all the bands coming down from Dublin or “groups” as we called them. It was an important distinction – “bands” denoted showbands, which we absolutely hated. We were into the blues.
The Cavern Club came out of the whole club scene that had already happened across the channel. This was around 1967-68. Beat groups were the big thing then. They were sprouting up everywhere like Them from Belfast with Van Morrison. We supported Taste at The Cavern and at school dances. It was great.
Rory Gallagher was a bit older than I was. They were already well-established. I was only a kid. He was always very nice, really helpful, showing me how to use his amp and stuff like that.
Rory really was amazing. Before I ever got to support him, before he made his first record, Blister on the Moon, I got to see him play at a tiny venue in Cork called The Shambles, which was a little coffee shop down Paul St. We used to hang out there after school.
One day, somebody said: “Taste are playing here tonight.” Sure enough, we got to see him play. Standing in front of him, a couple of metres away, watching him do his thing with that Strat blew my mind.
I remember Len De la Cour, a drummer from Youghal, broke the Guinness World Record for a drum solo. He played for three days nonstop. I think he was allowed toilet breaks but he had to eat while he played. He started on the Wednesday, I believe, and he was scheduled to break the record on the Friday night at The Cavern.
The place was packed. We played after he finished. My memory is that he played along with us for a while.
As a teenager, I loved first The Beatles. Then Cream, Jimi Hendrix. From them, I started digging into more older Chicago blues. Strangely enough, Eason’s in Cork had a blues section. You’d go in there and these LPs would show up. Blues samplers, in particular, with different artists on them: Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, all these guys.
I have a theory it might have been because of Rory Gallagher they were there. He had made such a success. He probably requested those albums. I can’t imagine why else they were showing up in Cork. I got great inspiration from them.
I developed the singing voice I have busking in London. Before this, I used to sing back in the folk clubs in Cork, and play instrumentals; people would listen obviously because they came to listen to music. But in London, in a subway situation, it’s quite noisy. There’s no amplification. People are shuffling off to work or coming home after work, and in no mood really. You have to catch their ear as they're flying past.
Instead of sitting down in the corner playing my little guitar instrumentals – and making no money – I decided I better make some noise. So I got a strap, stood up, and started singing loud and out. I sang the songs that were popular at the time, like David Bowie songs. You make a bit of noise and you make more money.
When I came back from London, I ended up living in Dublin. I started playing in Toner’s. I made a contact, a man named Phelim O’Leary, living in Rathmines. He was a music reviewer for a literary magazine in Dublin called Hibernia magazine. Every couple of weeks he got a batch of the latest records from the United States in through his letterbox.
I was living upstairs. I got to borrow them, sitting in his flat all day when he was out at work listening to these songwriters – for the first time – the likes of Guy Clark, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Leon Redbone, Tom Waits. I developed a great repertoire of songs from that incredible record recollection.
You can feel the honesty and the musicality. I mean, what's a good song? It’s from the heart. The music catches the ear, and then you dig a little deeper. You realise there's more there. With a song like Martha by Tom Waits, the sentiment just catches. It's a bit nostalgic. I still sing the song. It's funny, I sang it as a very young man.
It's about an old man, which I’m fast approaching now! I enjoyed playing it at the time, but I never realised it would take on this whole other life, which is a life that came through me, too, and through my beautiful audience that I have, particularly here in Ireland. It still rings a bell.
