Christy Dignam: A difficult life marked by abuse, but he found solace in music
Christy Dignam in 2012. Picture: VIPIRELAND.COM
Christy Dignam, who was born 23 May 1960, liked to recall his unorthodox introduction to music growing up in Finglas, Dublin. His father loved opera music, in particular the tenors John McCormack and Enrico Caruso. He had a habit of singing their opera songs while he was making the family – which included Dignam’s five siblings – their dinner on a Sunday.
“I remember going on the street, as a kid, singing these songs because I knew them from me da. I thought that was Top of the Pops,” remembered Dignam. It instilled in him a lifelong love of opera music. Dignam took bel canto singing lessons for about 15 years, a practice of continuous learning which began just as his career in music was taking off.
In 1982, Dignam was a founding member of Aslan. The year 1986 was a seminal year for the band – their debut single ‘This Is’ was a hit with DJs on 2FM in Ireland. In the UK, Janice Long, the legendary BBC Radio 1 presenter, recorded the band in a studio session, which aired an unprecedented three times over the ensuing weeks.
The influential Melody Maker magazine gushed: “Lucky the label that signs this band!” EMI stepped in and signed them to a two-album deal. The following year, David Bowie, who was also with EMI, played at Slane Castle. Dignam had been a Bowie fan since seeing him perform Life on Mars? on Top of the Pops in 1972.
“I was opening up to music at the time,” remembered Dignam. “Bowie was totally different to everyone else. He was like something from Mars. He was androgynous – you didn’t know if he was a bloke or a girl. The whole glam rock thing. There was a different aspect to it. It was more about the showbiz. That appealed to me. [When] Bowie was playing at Slane Castle …I remember saying to our manager: ‘We don't care if you never get us another gig. Get us Slane. We have to play with Bowie.’ And we did.”
In 1988, Aslan’s debut album, Feel No Shame, reached number 1 in the Irish album charts. Just as the band was set to take on the world, they split up, owing to Dignam’s spiralling heroin addiction. “The first time I got stoned on heroin, I didn’t feel, wow, I’m on a different plane,” he wrote in his 2019 memoir My Crazy World. “I’d taken hash, it was nice. I’d had drink, it was nice. I took coke, it was nice. But when I took heroin for the first time I just felt I was home.”
Dignam struggled with heroin addiction – and later an addiction to crack cocaine – until the 2000s. He admitted in interviews that trauma from sexual abuse contributed to his drug addiction problems. At the age of six, Dignam was sexually abused by a neighbour, abuse which carried on for several years. He was also sexually abused by the brother of a childhood friend.
In 2013, Dignam was diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare form of cancer. He was given six months to live, but found the strength to live for a decade more. He kept cancer at bay through regular blood tests and occasional chemotherapy treatments. He showed remarkable resilience, having to contend also with insomnia; a pacemaker to help with the functioning of his heart; and kidney damage that required diuretics.
Facing mortality gave him a new perspective on life. Wanting to spend time with his family – including his wife Kathryn; daughter Keira; son-in-law Darren and his grandchildren – became his priority. Dignam also found solace in music. He had re-joined Aslan in 1993, after spending a couple of years performing and recording as part of Dignam & Goff, a project with guitarist Conor Goff. Aslan’s live album Made in Dublin, which was launched by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 1999, was one of six Aslan albums that topped the charts in Ireland.
Dignam retained remarkable productivity in his final years. He released his first solo album, The Man Who Stayed Alive, in 2021; collaborated with American rapper Coolio; and Aslan gigged, as part of a fortieth anniversary tour, until Dignam went into Beaumont Hospital in July 2022. He returned home in December 2022 where he received palliative care until his passing on June 13, 2023.
