Ireland in 50 Albums, No 1: Good Year For Trouble, by the Sultans of Ping
Good Year for Trouble by the Sultans of Ping
They were widely beloved – not least by the then all-powerful British music press. Soon there was hype around a semi-fictional “Corkchester” scene – comprising of the Sultans, the Frank and Walters and emerging groups such as Emperor of Ice Cream.
It wasn’t long, though, before publications such as the NME and Melody Maker got bored, looked elsewhere – finally embarking on the orgy of jingoism that was Britpop. And the Sultans were left twisting in the wind slightly.
This, at least, is the commonly-told version of the story. O’Flaherty remembers it differently. If the Sultans were ever music press darling it was for only a fleeting moment, he says. One that ended almost as soon as it had begun.
“The story is probably from our perspective feels a bit different to that,” says O’Flaherty.
“We came in with a bit of a bang, publicity-wise, for sure. For the main part that didn’t last long at all. Everything we did we built up by touring. We toured and toured and toured and toured. We didn’t feel so much at all ever that we’d been flavour of the month and then we weren’t, in terms of the music press who were very powerful back in the day.
"They really could make or break you. We never felt we’d been the flavour and then we weren’t. We did feel that times were changing somewhat. And also, if we’d kept making records more like the first record, perhaps things might have been different. That isn’t what we wanted to make.”
“Financially we weren’t making any money,” recalls McCarthy, who had by then started working in music merchandising (a career he has continued to this day – he speaks to the from Prague, where he is touring with Radiohead side-project The Smile).
“We all had to do different things. I was doing the merchandise. Pat started to work in finance. For four or five years we were getting a weekly wage from the Sultans. And when you’re getting money in your pocket you’re thinking, ‘oh this is alright. ’”
As the money dried up, McCarthy feared the worst.
“It did feel like the end. It was such a quick evolution for the band, from the first album to the third. I think it was too quick for a lot of fans. I don’t think most bands would change their songs that quickly. We didn’t pick up a new audience either. It was tough.”
That isn’t to say they were ready to throw in the towel. The success of the debut, 1993’s Casual Sex in the Cineplex, had given them a great deal of confidence, says O’Flaherty. And they had built on that with Teenage Drug – a brighter brasher cousin of Casual Sex (and the singer’s favourite Sultans LP).
“When we went to make the second album, we stopped saying, ‘What the hell is going on? How the hell have we been signed?’ And we started saying, ‘This is what we do now’. You start to get an idea, maybe this is your career here. A little bit of self-belief comes in.
"And of course, you’re not in your hometown anymore. You’re on the road every day. Your life experiences are different. You feel the world’s your oyster. You can do whatever you like, more and more. That doesn’t necessarily mean people will go along with you. But it’s how it felt
to us.”
And there were still bright points. Earlier in 1996, they toured Italy with The Ramones. And then came the offer of a lifetime: to open for the
reformed Sex Pistols at the Le Zénith Paris on July 4 1996.
“We don’t know how it happened. We just got a phone call. It was a mystery. Quite bizarre. We were on the way down and then suddenly got
offered this. It was one of the best venues in Paris.”
Playing with the Sex Pistols to 10,000 moshing French people was a departure. And so, in a different way, was Good Year For Trouble.
O’Flaherty, in particular, had started to bridle at the cliche of the Sultans as “wacky” Corkonians. That they were a novelty or comedy band.
Humour had a place in their writing – so did irreverence, anger and a belief in punk’s philosophy of ripping it up and starting again.
“When there’s a little bit of humour to what you do, that humour can come to define you. I remember Irish comedians reviewing us in a magazine and saying, ‘Where’s Me Jumper? was hilariously funny. This record isn’t funny at all’ .
"Well, we’re not stand-up comedians. Anything that could reduce that expectation that you’re going to get another funny one coming up…that is what we were trying to do. And trying to be recognised for the songs.”
One of the ways in which they went about overhauling their sound was with an additional guitarist.
“We wanted to beef it up,” recalls McCarthy. “Niall was for a more rock approach. It was actually one of The Shanks, another Cork band, who said, ‘you know Sammy Stieger from the [Dublin garage-punks] the Golden Horde has moved to London’. I said it to Niall and he said, ‘yeah he’s going to be in the band – just get him’. We were all big fans of the Horde and supported them many times. A perfect fit.”
Blackwing subsequently became a favourite base for Depeche Mode (also from Basildon and Clarke’s former band). It was where Pixies made Trompe Le Monde and Nine Inch Nails recorded segments of their debut, Pretty Hate Machine. The Sultans bunkered down with Steve Lovell, a veteran who had worked with Julian Cope, Flock of Seagulls and who had produced the debut album by Dublin’s A House, On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Round.
“It was a very good studio,” says Morty. “My Bloody Valentine recorded there. A lot of the shoegaze bands did. Steve Lovell was great to work with. He always got the best out of us. Lifted us up a level. We listened to and respected him. A perfect mentor for us.”
There were external pressures – in particular, as McCarthy says, the financial exigencies. But they left all that outside the studio.
“We did rehearsals for a couple of weeks every day. It could have been 10 or 12 days where we recorded the album. It was a good sound,” says McCarthy.
“We’d liked the sound. We weren’t adding extra things. It was a rock record and was played and recorded as a rock record. Listening back to it now, most of it holds its own. It’s something to be proud of.”
“The idea was we want to sound as live as possible. We were working hard,” says O’Flaherty. “We were touring hard at the time. We were tight enough to go in and do that. We went in a smashed it out to a large degree.”
O’Flaherty was always the main songwriter. But by 1996 he’d opened up the group somewhat.
“As we went on, the rest of the band influenced the sound more. They had the confidence to put their ideas forward. And had plenty to contribute. So maybe that side of things changed. Became less dictatorial.”
The fruits of their newly-democratic labours have certainly stood the test of time.
