Ireland in 50 Albums, No 9: 'If This Is Rock and Roll...', by The Saw Doctors
The Saw Doctors picture from the back cover image of the debut album, If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back. (1991). From left: Pearse Doherty, John 'Turps’ Burke, John Donnelly, Davy Carton and Leo Moran. Picture: Frank Miller
The first Féile concert was held on the August bank holiday weekend in 1990. The Saw Doctors headed to the venue at Semple Stadium in Thurles more in hope than expectation. Earlier that year their debut single, 'N17', had sold only 150 copies on release. At the Co Tipperary event, they helped to check wristbands on festivalgoers at the turnstiles over the weekend. Their slot was early on Sunday, the third day of the festival.
“We were on the same time as mass – at 12 o’clock in the day,” says Davy Carton, the band’s lead singer. “We heard the same day that our new single 'I Useta Lover' had gone into number 19 in the charts. We couldn't believe it. In the next couple of months, history was made because it crawled up the charts and went to number one, and it stayed at number one for nine weeks.
“By October, I was saying, ‘I'm going to have to pack in the job now. There might be a chance I'll make a few quid out of touring and record sales.’ It was such a whirlwind. It totally changed my life. That song happened when I was 31, working a nine-to-five job. It was late to become a so-called pop star. It took us on a complete rollercoaster."
The bands' families were also enjoying the ride. “I remember me mam was like, ‘Jeez, you're doing awful well. I hear Larry Gogan's playing ye all the time. And Dad is listening to the charts and you’re climbing well there.’," says Carton. "Eventually, we hit the number one spot. I went down to see her and my dad. It was celebration time. My mam said, ‘Gosh, fair play to ye. Do you know what? You'll get a great job, a salesman's job or something, out of this.’ She was serious.”
In immediate terms, what they got on the back of the success of 'I Useta Lover', which is the biggest selling single in the history of Irish music charts, was the chance to record their debut album. Around November 1990, the band – which was formed in Tuam, Co Galway in 1986 – headed across to Loco Studios near Newport, Wales, to put down 15 tracks for the album, If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back.
“I remember the luxury of it,” says Carton. “Get up in the morning and there's a recording studio to go into. I'm nearly a rock star at this stage. My abiding memory is the feeling ‘This is not work’, which is how the title came about, 'If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back'. It was being sarcastic. It was also lovely to get our songs recorded and hear them come to fruition. It was amazing. Lovely dinners in the evening, a few pints, off to bed, up in the morning, do a bit more recording. Living the dream.”
Different influences can be detected in the album, nods to some of their heroes like with, say, 'Why Do I Always Want You?' (Buddy Holly); 'That’s What She Said Last Night' (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band); and 'It Won’t Be Tonight' (REM). There is, too, something universal in the lyrics that captures small-town life in the West of Ireland, which resonated with their audience, of emigration, first love, devilment and the immortal rhyming of 'mass' and 'ass'.
“Tuam was always important to us,” says Carton. “It's like any town. It's got its ups and its downs. It’s got like, ‘Oh, Jesus, I'm fed up here. I need to go somewhere else.’ It gave us the best grounding for going anywhere or writing songs. We found that we wrote these songs, and we met people from small towns and they were saying, ‘I totally understand your lyrics.’ No matter where we went – America, the UK, the tiniest towns. Tuam helped us with that connection.
“We wrote the song 'N17', for example, about the torture going down that road to Shannon Airport, having to head off to emigrate. Then we wrote a song like 'Back to Tuam', which is like, ‘Jeez, I'm delighted to go back to Tuam. I miss Junie’s Bar for a pint.’ It’s a love-hate relationship.”
Mike Scott of The Waterboys produced the 'N17', which is the penultimate track on the album, and he also does backing vocals on the “stone walls and the grasses green” parts. The song was given a memorable treatment by Tolü Makay and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra a couple of years ago, an Irish anthem introduced to new ears.
“I had the lyrics written, ‘No matter where I go from Tuam, I’ll always be a sham,’ ” says Leo Moran, lead guitarist with the band. “A lot of our friends were in America at the time so I wrote it from their perspective. Then Davy came down one day and he was talking about the new N17 signs that they put out the Galway Road. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ because it was the Galway Road to us; it was never the N17, but it had a ring to it, ‘the N17’.
"Davy came up with the chorus, which is nice and quirky, which is one of Davy’s great talents. He can construct something that's unusual with a quirk in it.”
The album was released in May 1991. The cover features the band members’ fathers in leather jackets (and the band themselves on the back cover). The Saw Doctors say the next few years went like a blur. They went back to the second Féile festival in the summer of 1991 as a headline act, above De La Soul and the Paul Brady Band on Saturday’s bill. They played to huge crowds at Knebworth and on the main stage at Glastonbury. Famously in 1993, they arrived by river boat when supporting Neil Young and Pearl Jam at Slane Castle. The fame never went to their heads though.
“When you grow up in a small town, you're used to being recognised anyway," says Moran. "It's part of your life. It's just an extension of that really. I noticed at times if you were on the television on the Late Late Show or something, and you'd be walking down the street in Galway people would catch your eye. They’d have seen you on the television.
"You could see them realising that you were familiar to them in some way, but after about a week or two that wears away unless you're on telly all the time. If it’s not being reinforced. It fades away naturally.”
The Saw Doctors released several more studio albums. In 1993, the band’s organ and accordion player Tony Lambert won the Irish Lotto, and moved to Thailand shortly afterwards; he died there in 2018.
In 2008, The Saw Doctors topped the Irish charts again with a version of the Sugababes' song 'About You Now'.
In 2013, they announced a break in touring, but returned after a four-year hiatus, toured for a while, and then took another break for a few years. They have been back touring since before Christmas, predominately in the UK.
- The Saw Doctors will play a homecoming gig at St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, Co Galway, Saturday, August 19. See www.sawdoctors.com
