Ireland in 50 Albums, No 14: Immigrants, Emigrants and Me, by Power of Dreams
Craig Walker of Power of Dreams.
Craig Walker, the singer and guitarist of Dublin band Power of Dreams remembers flying to London with his bandmates, younger brother and drummer Keith and childhood friend and bass player Mick Lennox, to sign their recording contract in late 1989. The band had been courted by major labels for a few months but things were about to get surreal.
“We landed in Heathrow with our families. Our parents had to come over and sign and Mick’s parents had to come over also. I was just over 18 but the lads were underage,” says Walker.
“As we landed we get a message over the intercom. ‘Would somebody from the Power of Dreams group please make their way to a telephone.’ We were on our way to sign to Polydor and we’re getting intercom messages from Sony. They wanted to offer us double the money. But we went with Polydor because it was The Velvet Underground’s label. Polydor was a great label, we were big fans of The Who and The Jam.”
A few months earlier A Little Piece of God, the band’s debut EP, produced by Sean O’Neill of The Undertones, was released on the London-Irish indie label Setanta Records.
“We put our actual address on the back of our first single,” remembers Walker. “The single came out and did really well. So obviously it was easy to find a ‘Walker’ in Walkinstown in the phonebook. I was getting these phone calls. My mother was like, ‘I’ve got Geoff Travis on the phone, he says he’s from Rough Trade Records’, or ‘I’ve got an Alan McGee from Creation Records on the phone.’”
Power of Dreams duly signed to Polydor and began planning their debut album. Different producers were suggested but Craig wanted to work with Ray Shulman from 70s prog-rockers Gentle Giant. Shulman sadly passed away on March 30 this year and Craig has only fond memories of his time working with him.
“I met a lot of producers but Ray Shulman was easily the nicest and he was really into the music. He had been in Gentle Giant with his brothers but I had never heard of them. I did listen to them later and I liked a lot of their stuff.”
Walker might not have been familiar with Gentle Giant, but there were three good reasons why Shulman was picked as producer. “He had produced Life’s Too Good by The Sugarcubes, The Sundays’ Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and he had just produced Ian McCulloch’s solo album Candleland. I was a really big fan of that album. I liked the sound of those three albums so I wanted to work with Ray.”
Shulman picked Master Rock studio in Kilburn to record the album. “He purposely picked that place because it had a massive live room,” recalls Craig.
“We took ten days to record the bass and drums and then the lads went back to Dublin. I stayed on and did all my guitars and vocals. That was probably for a month. I was put up in the Hilton Hotel in Kensington.”
“It couldn’t get any better than that, there’s a reason why I still owe them money,” says Walker laughing.
If the sound of The Sundays’ debut album was an influence on Walker’s choice of producer, then so too was their album title. “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was an influence. I liked the idea of saying a lot with just three words. Immigrants, Emigrants and Me, as a title it captured a moment in 1990.
“Ireland was a completely different place from today. I remember while we were doing the Leaving Cert in 1989 the teacher gave us an end of year speech and he said, ‘70% of you are going to leave and you’re doing the right thing.’ It was just inevitable. It was either stay and be one of the lucky few or go, there just weren’t opportunities. It felt like everyone I knew was leaving.”
Walker had his album title, now he just needed a cover photograph. At the time the ISPCC had their headquarters above the Power of Dreams’ manager’s office on Suffolk Street and Craig remembers spotting a photograph of a little girl standing on a landing, a teddy bear by her side looking out a window in what appears to be a rundown tenement building.
“I remember seeing the photograph when it was used by the ISPCC on a short-lived campaign. I think the photographer was pretty well known.” William Fagan, Chairperson of Photo Museum Ireland in Temple Bar, explains that the photo was taken by Bill Doyle in Belvedere Place, Dublin in 1975. Walker had no idea about the context of the picture. “I saw it in the office and said, ‘that’s it, that’s the album cover.’ It just fit perfectly with the album title as well.”
Immigrants, Emigrants and Me was released in July 1990, and received great reviews. The NME wrote that the band, “have shown that they have the power to uplift, the power to inspire, the power to provoke and the power to dream.” Sounds declared, “they’re too young, too fast, and too confident. They’re absolutely wonderful.”
The album lived up to its hyperbolic reviews. It contained some huge anthems including the singles ‘100 Ways to Kill a Love’ and ‘Never Been to Texas’. But it was in its quieter moments such as on ‘Had You Listened’ and ‘Average Day’ that Craig’s maturity as a teenage songwriter was really revealed.
Upon the album’s release Cork guitarist Ian Olney (Cypress Mine! Etc) was asked to join Power of Dreams. “I was a massive fan of Cypress, Mine! and particularly of Ian,” says Craig. “They were a great band. Ian was on another level; a great player. Ian’s one of the best guitar players Ireland’s ever produced.” The album launched the band on a touring whirlwind for the next few years opening for the Wedding Present, the House of Love, Pixies, Wire and The Mission.
“The Mission were playing to between five and six thousand people a night everywhere we went all over Europe,” says Walker. “I came to Berlin for the first time on that Mission tour, it was 1990 and the Wall had just come down, that was an amazing experience. The Mission were great, super nice guys from the north of England. We really hit it off. From that tour we picked up a big following.”
Walker’s fondest memory of recording the album? “The best moment was when I got a call from Ray Shulman to go around to his house in Earl’s Court. Ray and his wife were both really nice and he played the finished album to me on his nice speakers and it was amazing.” “He said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve made a fantastic record, no matter what happens from this point on you’ll have always made a great record’. That was the best moment. Just to have made an album, we couldn’t believe that.”
Power of Dreams released several more albums, but in terms of commercial success, the band never quite made the breakthrough expected by some people after Immigrants, Emigrants and Me.
They went their separate ways in the mid-1990s, and Walker went on to form the bands Pharmacy and Archive. As a Berlin-based songwriter he has enjoyed success collaborating with many other artists, including German dance duo Booka Shade.
Power of Dreams released a comeback album Ausländer in 2021, and Walker recently released Electric Shoes, a 12-track collaboration with Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Alcock.
- Paul McDermott’s podcast To Here Knows When – Great Irish Albums Revisited is available on all listening platforms. https://www.paulmcdermott.ie/podcast
