Culture That Made Me: Philip King on Cork, Planxty and Amy Winehouse
Philip King, 70, grew up in Glasheen, Cork city. In 1980, his band Scullion released their debut album, and his documentary series Bringing It All Back Home won an Emmy Award in 1991. In 2003, Other Voices, the music festival and TV series which he created in Dingle, was first broadcast on RTÉ television. Plans were recently announced for a version of the show to be recorded at UCC.
He lives on the Dingle Peninsula where he broadcasts South Wind Blows, his RTÉ Radio 1 show. Scullion will perform at The Everyman, Saturday, Sept 24 as part of Coughlans Live Music Fest '22, and they also play other dates around the country. See: www.scullion.com
The arc of my musical expedition around the world started in Cork. Much of what I respond to is shot through a Cork filter. Growing up in a city that has its own voice, accent and culture. A place that is 'idir eatarthu' – between worlds, between Irish and English. The country and the city are connected.
I think about Seamus Murphy’s Stone Mad, Frank O'Connor, Sean Ó Faoláin, Sean Ó Riordáin, Seán Ó Riada, the tradition of Cork tenors singing The Banks, that identifiable Cork way of singing that morphed into somebody like Seán Ó Sé. On the other hand, you had Rory Gallagher.
It’s a lilting, musical city, a melting pot of blues, traditional music, bluegrass music, The Lee Valley String Band. Those notes of music dropped into my ear are still rocking and rolling inside me.
When you're 15 or 16 and you see somebody like Rory Gallagher with that level of vigorous passion, and you're in the City Hall or in the darkness in a club on Leitrim St. and you see this energy, this figure entirely dedicated to his craft, the effect is monumental. Rory displaced air when he played. He owned the room. His commitment to his art was profound.
This was the world where the guitar was a big deal. Rory was playing the Isle of Wight. He was from Cork and he always was coming home. Goin’ To My Hometown became an anthem for people like us.
Planxty were undoubtedly significant and still continue to be a profound influence. Four characters of remarkable musical proficiency, talent and passion. I remember leaving the Phoenix bar and going to see Donovan playing in the City Hall in Cork. I couldn't give you a date. The support act was Planxty.
We all sat at the back of the hall. After Raggle Taggle Gypsy and Tabhair Dom Do Lámh, everybody put their hand up in the air and said, “That's ours.” It was a cathartic moment. We sensed that here was something that was ours at a time when we were beginning to throw off the shackles of a post-colonial society 50 years since independence. That was a coming of age for us.
One of the greatest gigs I've seen in my life was Amy Winehouse stand on a little stage in St James’ Church in Dingle in 2006 and play those eight songs with a bass player, no drummer, and a guitar player. It was like going to heaven on the wings of song. She inhabited a song like nobody else I'd ever heard.
Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin was a gifted musician. I never forget the first time I heard him play. Walking down a stony corridor in UCC, I heard a piano in the Aula Max. He was playing Bean Dubh An Ghleanna. It was mesmerising. He was a musical innovator who had the imagination to take music out of the well of tradition which it came and make it new.
He also took what was an unwritten, orally transmitted music into the universities of both Cork and Limerick and gave it the status it deserved in the hallowed halls of academia. His work is profound and massively influential. He's sadly missed.
I like Frank Zappa’s unholiness: his ability to send something up. Particularly Lumpy Gravy, We’re Only In It For The Money, “Quit school, why fake it …TV dinner by the pool…”. The way he lampooned the hippiness of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the place out of which he came. His relationship with the great Captain Beefheart as well. They ploughed a unique furrow.
He was a consummate guitar player, a great musician and a brilliant arranger. There was that sense of fun in him. He was able to hold people up to a very satirical view. I liked that because it was an antidote to some of the wholesomeness of the other music around at the time.
I remember seeing Ry Cooder in the National Stadium in Dublin. There was something about that gig. It was around the time of his Bop Till You Drop record. The power of him. Cooder live was mesmerising. He was clued into Irish traditional music. And here's a connection: Ry Cooder played with Captain Beefheart. He knew Frank Zappa.
He went on to develop his interest in the rootedness of American music and the two cultures out of which it came, which was the collision of African American culture and Appalachian music, which became country music.
There is a powerful French series of documentaries, Attack on Paris, on what happened at the Bataclan. First person witness statements of people who were there. It’s simple in its construction and in its style, but is so powerful and heart-breaking on a personal level. I was moved to tears by it.
It’s hard to beat Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz because it's live. It's real. It's flawed like the band were themselves, but they were the greatest band in the world at the time.
When you watch Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson do their thing at the Winterland, and Van Morrison walks out and sings Caravan (“Turn up your radio…”), and Muddy Waters comes out and sings Manish Boy, Joni Mitchell is there in the shadows singing Coyote, it's truly wonderful. It’s how to capture a film. It’s stunning.
Seamus Heaney and myself were good friends. With his poetry, where do you start? His language, his accent, his insightfulness. He had that ability to say something succinctly. “Poetry is a help,” he said, quoting George Seferis. His poem The Given Note was written about Port na bPúcaí, a tune that Liam O'Flynn used to play, which came from a body of water between Dunquin and the Great Blasket Island.
It's the note that is given. It is a gift. It is something that it is in all of our ownership. It's owned by us all, but it's owned by nobody. It passes on to the next generation. I love the way he used that phrase – “the given note”. Seamus Heaney is a consistent presence for me. I miss him.
