Music That Made Me: Paul Cleary of The Blades on his formative influences
Paul Cleary and The Blades play in Cyprus Avenue, Cork, in September. Picture: Bryan Meade
Paul Cleary, 64, grew up in Ringsend, Dublin. In 1979, he co-founded The Blades.
After several acclaimed singles, the band released their debut album The Last Man in Europe in 1985, which included the classic track Downmarket.
The Blades disbanded shortly afterwards but reformed in 2013. Over the years, he also fronted The Partisans, The Cajun Kings and released solo material.
The Blades will perform at Cork’s Cyprus Avenue, 7pm, Saturday, 7 September. See: www.cyprusavenue.ie.
My dad was the best non-musician musician I've ever met. He had a good singing voice too. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music. In records, he bought anything from Bad Company to Bach. He introduced me to The Beatles. Hearing them, I thought they were magical. I remember thinking, while listening to The Beatles, and then going to see their movies, that this world of music is fantastic, and this is only one group. I didn't know at the time The Beatles were so far ahead of other bands, and the rest were doing their best to reach that level of competence.
I remember my dad had a Bill Haley EP. The songs on it included Rock Around the Clock; See You Later, Alligator; and Mambo Rock. They weren’t brilliant songs, but to me they just came out of the air. They came out in the late 1950s, and I was listening to them about 10 years later – I was about six or seven – but they were still great. I didn’t realise this was the bedrock of rock ’n ’roll.
Paul Simon is still a favourite singer-songwriter. He has a song called 'Run That Body Down': “Went to my doctor yesterday/She said I seem to be okay…” The key for me there was when the doctor becomes a woman, which is normal these days, but for him to say back in the 1970s “she said” was a surprise.
In my head, it was a male doctor. It was a lovely touch. This was before the word sexism hardly existed. Still a woman couldn't even have a bloody bank account in Ireland. Ridiculous things that we laugh at now: “Were they real then?” Paul Simon was great at adding little things to his songs that would raise your eyebrows slightly.
Growing up, James Taylor’s singing voice appealed to me. He used a lot of country-isms with his singing voice and phrasing. The songs have a country flavour to them but they're not country songs. They're good pop/folk songs. James Taylor is one of those guys who was supremely talented.
A lot of talented people came out of the LA scene in the early- to mid-70s, but Joni Mitchell is supreme. Some of her stuff is so good it's almost difficult for me to understand it musically. Songs like Big Yellow Taxi are pure genius. Her singing voice, her phrasing, her lyrics are peerless. To me the three geniuses of pop music are Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, and Joni Mitchell.
Stevie Wonder’s double album Songs in the Key of Life is probably my favourite album. It came out in 1976 so it’s pre-punk. It has beautiful songwriting. The opening track Love’s in Need of Love Today is gorgeous.
The first track I heard from it was while watching The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC television. It accompanied a cartoon, and it was Pastime Paradise. A beautiful song later used as Gangster Paradise. It also has Sir Duke, a tribute to Duke Ellington, and I Wish where Stevie plays drums himself.
I remember first hearing about the Pistols – or reading about them – in a review. I thought that's a great name for a band – the Sex Pistols. That Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks is great. I still get the hairs standing at the back of my neck when I hear a Pistols track blasting out of the radio. I loved the punk movement. You didn’t have to be university educated. You didn’t need a lot of money to start a band yourself. You could just write songs and do it. That DIY ethic helped people in bands like me. It was saying: “You can do it too.”
Mick Jones and Joe Strummer were great songwriters. What sold me, of course, is that gig that everybody claims to have been at, which was The Clash gig at Trinity College in 1977. I went with my brother Larry, and Pat Larkin, the original drummer in The Blades. They were fantastic visually. The energy was great. They were the best-looking band – they were the best posers. They blew us away. It wasn’t only the music that blew us away. The smell of spliffs in the place was unbelievable! So the atmosphere in the venue was very heady and then The Clash came along and bang – 100 miles an hour each song. It was raw, energetic street music. We walked out of that gig convinced this is what we should do.
Elvis Costello really influenced me. Somebody played me my first demo a few years ago and it's embarrassing how much of my vocal was trying to sound like Elvis Costello.
I hadn’t found my real voice. He was the first one to marry the melodic sensibilities and clever lyrics of The Beatles with the energy of the Clash/Sex Pistols. I saw him in the Stella Cinema in Rathmines, Dublin in 1978. I might have missed the opening track, but to walk into Elvis doing No Action – to see him do that live – was fantastic.
I saw The Jam in Dún Laoghaire’s Top Hat venue. They had that energy and that rebelliousness, but also with melody in mind. It wasn't nihilism. It wasn't negative. As Johnny Rotten said years later, “Anger is an energy.” That's what The Jam had – that anti-establishment anger, but also they had the melody too. They were great performers. I have an admiration for musicians who are still doing it like Paul Weller.
I always loved Dexys Midnight Runners, the whole package – the attitude, the way they dressed, the Donkey jackets. Kevin Rowland wanted them to look like New York dockers on the waterfront. They had a sense of being a group, travelling together on the train to gigs. I knew brass instruments and horn sections from listening to Motown and Stax, but to hear them introduced, not as background arrangements, but as lead instruments, that complemented the vocal at the same level, was captivating. Kevin Rowland was an Antichrist, with two fingers to the world, which was great. We need people like Kevin Rowland, who can be a pain in the arse a lot of time. I admired all that.
