Music That Made Me: Paul Brady picks his touchstone influences and a career highlight
Paul Brady recently published his memoir, Crazy Dreams.
Born in 1947, Paul Brady grew up in Strabane, Co Tyrone. In 1967, he joined the ballad group The Johnstons, and seven years later, teamed up with Planxty.
In 1976, he released the classic album Andy Irvine/Paul Brady. His album Hard Station, which came out in 1981, marked a shift towards rock’n’roll which brought him international acclaim and a fan in Bob Dylan.
His memoir Crazy Dreams was published recently by Merrion Press.
When I was 11 or 12 years old, the singer that most impressed me and gave me glee and joy was Little Richard. His song ‘Long Tall Sally’ was all the time running around my head. He was outrageous. His voice was incredible. The arrangements of the band, with tenor saxes, and its grooves, were incredible.
Ray Charles went to Nashville to do an album called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. It had very lush arrangements with a lot of orchestral work and chorus singers in the background, which, if you hadn't had Ray Charles' voice in the middle of it, might have sounded schmaltzy, but his voice was a whole new thing. It became a huge hit worldwide. ‘I Can't Stop Lovin’ You’ was one of the classic songs from that album. When I was on summer holidays in Bundoran around 1962 it would have been blasted all over the amusement arcades.
I always thought The Beatles were great performers. I remember lying in bed the night I heard ‘Love Me Do’ for the first time. Before I went to sleep I listened to late-night radio at home in Strabane and it came on. At first, I wasn't crazy about it. It sounded like a copy of Bruce Channel’s ‘Hey! Baby’, mainly because of the harmonica in it, but then when ‘Please Please Me’’, She Loves You’ and the rest of it all came out, I became a total fan.
The next thing that happened to me in the Sixties was coming under the spell of traditional Irish music. I fell in love with the uilleann pipes and Séamus Ennis at the time was the recognised master. He had an album out on Gael Linn at the time, a reissue of it was called Ceol, Scéalta Agus Amhráin. There was a track on that record that I would pull out called ‘An Fainne Oir’, which was a masterful piece of piping that made me a total fan of traditional music from then on.
I made an album with Tommy Peoples in the mid-Seventies for a label called Shanachie. I loved his playing. The album was called The High Part of the Road. He had a sound and a style and a technique of his own that I'd never heard any other player use. He also had a repertoire of tunes that were, to me at least, new. To me, he was the best fiddle player that ever existed.
I loved a lot of sean-nós singers from Connemara, but that was way outside my territory. I was more drawn to Northern singers – songs in the English language which were very pure and raw, and not an awful lot of vocal ornamentation like there would have been in the sean-nós singing of Connemara, but still there was a great heart in the music. Paddy Tunney, Geordie Hannah, Eddie Butcher – those three Northern singers had a big influence on me.
I’m a huge Hank Williams fan. Back when I was making demos for Hard Station in the winter of ’79, I recorded my own version of Hank's song ‘You Win Again’. Hank Williams, what a voice. It’s also the songs he wrote – they were simple lyrics, yet so strong, so powerful emotionally and the way he sang them was extremely emotional too. And of course the arrangements – I love those old, early pedal-steel guitars and that lonesome country sound. Country’s got extremely sophisticated now. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between it and mainstream pop music. But in those days, Hank Williams was the real deal. I prefer stuff that isn't too schmaltzy. I prefer raw singing. Perhaps that's because I'm a bit raw myself [laughs].
I was very much a fan of Ike & Tina Turner. When I went to Dublin to university in 1964, I wasn't long there before I was in a band. I was covering songs over those years, 1964 to ’66, by Ike & Tina Turner, stuff like ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ and ‘Proud Mary’. They would have been a huge influence for me. In the mid-1980s, a career highlight was doing a guest spot with Tina Turner in the RDS. I got up to sing a duet with her on my song ‘Paradise is Here’. I never expected to sing with Tina Turner and I never expected to be teaching Bob Dylan how to play ‘The Lakes of Ponchartrain’!
I always liked James Brown. His on-stage act was seriously good. I would have been listening to James Brown a lot in the ’60s. I loved those soul singers like Junior Walker, Wilson Pickett and Ray Charles, but as far as performance was concerned James Brown was king.
Theo Katzman Most recently an artist I really admire – I've worked with him and we've done gigs together – is an American singer-songwriter called Theo Katzman. He plays sometimes with an American band called Vulfpeck. His album Heartbreak Hits, which came out five years ago, is a stunning album. I love that album a lot. He’s a great artist.
I saw two great gigs by Paul Simon. One in Gowran Park, Kilkenny, and some years later in the RDS, which was just a few years ago. I was playing on the same concert bill, guesting with Bonnie Raitt, who was opening for Paul Simon. Paul Simon's band and his catalogue, his repertoire is so interesting. Those two would have been stand-out gigs.
The Meeting Place was a pub in Dublin’s Dorset Street. The upstairs room, which was a small room, was a music gig venue and in the late Seventies/early Eighties, it was a place where people like Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Mary Black, Moya Brennan from Clannad, and myself, we all performed there. It became a regular hangout for us at the time. A lot of it all started there.
