Ireland In 50 Albums, No 32: Kissing the Roof of Heaven, by Hinterland (1990)
Donal Coughlan and Gerry Leonard of Hinterland.
Gerry Leonard, the Irish guitarist best known for his work with David Bowie, lights up when he starts talking about Hinterland, the band he formed in the late 1980s with his old friend Donal Coughlan.
“It’s always welcome with me to talk about Hinterland. It’s a chapter that’s kind of on a dusty shelf now. But it was an interesting chapter,” says Leonard.
Hinterland released one album, Kissing the Roof of Heaven, on Island Records in 1990. It’s a record regarded by some of the key participants in its recording as a lost classic.
“It’s a hidden gem and definitely one of the great experiences of my career,” says producer Chris O’Brien who recorded the album’s sessions.
Wayne Sheehy, the former Cactus World News member, who drummed on the sessions agrees: “Songs of this calibre are still rare all on one album, it’s a treasure. I loved the songs, the people became dear friends and I was invested in their dream.”
The Hinterland dream ended in the mid-90s. Leonard headed to New York with $200 in his pocket and eventually became David Bowie’s musical director. Coughlan, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 23, continued writing and recording and sadly passed away in 2016. He was 53.
“It was very sad at the end. It’s such a weird disease. He was always very brave with it but it really kicked his ass,” says Leonard of his old friend.
“But it was a pipe dream of ours. And we got to do it in the sense that we got to make the record.”
Leonard and Coughlan met in Dublin in the early 80s, they both played in local bands. “I knew of Donal; in a sense we were like minded spirits,” says Leonard.
“He’d always been in bands. He was more the singer and lyricist while I was more the guitar player. Bands generally had an epicentre with maybe one or two people who are really committed. He was one of those people.”
Their friendship was forged when they both ended up in Denmark in 1986. “We independently emigrated to Copenhagen for a summer, I’d finished my classical guitar lessons and this was my getaway,” says Leonard “Donal had been diagnosed, he was in remission, and that was the thing that ultimately had driven him to Copenhagen. So he gave up his pensionable steady job and he became a musician full time. I ended up sleeping on his floor the first few nights I was there. So we kept his MS on the low down. Nobody knew and that’s what Donal wanted.”
They started writing songs together and back in Dublin they set about recording some demos.
“It took us a few batches of songs before we actually felt we had hit on something and that was ‘Galway Bay’,” says Leonard. “My aesthetic and Donal’s aesthetic came together and we had this new sound. The song seemed to work, it seemed unusual in its own way, we felt we were on to something. ‘Galway Bay’ was Donal’s first song and it deals with his MS. He was able to say it all in that song, which is a difficult thing to sum up, this huge life-changing event for Donal. That runs through his lyrics, he was very committed to the lyrics of the songs.”
Before long music industry figures began to take note. “We had this demo that was hot and people were knocking on our door suddenly,” says Leonard.
“British A&R would fly in and we’d bring them up to Donal’s house where he had a little studio set up in the box room. James Dowdall came over from Island records and said, ‘I’ll have Clive Banks [Island Records managing firector] here on Monday morning.’ And he did. We were charmed by it all, we signed with Island Records.”
Leonard and Coughlan set about recording their debut album. “The songs were pretty formed and needed to be brought to life, which is really the process that we did with Chris O’Brien,” recalls Leonard.
O’Brien remembers the sessions with great affection. “In the spring of 1989 we started recording in Ireland’s first all-Digital Studio in the old Regal Cinema in Ringsend and bunkered in for a good five months or so. All the tracks had a definite blueprint that came from the band’s demo tapes,” says O’Brien.
“The task in hand was for the album recording to take on a bigger soundstage and with the added dimension of Wayne Sheehy’s drums and percussion and great performances from the guys we had all the ingredients to make that classic LP.” Sheehy remembers the sessions. “The demos were heavily programmed rhythmically and they were determined that the parts would be very similar sonically and arrangement wise but with a human dynamic and feel. A challenge, but one I accepted. Chris recorded and captured the drums very powerfully.” Sheehy continues, “I was emotionally involved with the music. There was a lot of excitement around the band, we all loved the songs, respected one another professionally and that chemistry was rare to find.”
Kissing the Roof of Heaven was released in July 1990. The album was preceded by the single ‘Desert Boots’, a song that namechecks the haunts of Leonard and Coughlan’s youth: the Dandelion market, Clontarf’s St Anne’s Park and Burrow Beach in Sutton. Coughlan sings: “The Dandelion on a winter’s day, I told you I was going away, to be a star in a famous band, eight years on in the Hinterland.”
It’s a gorgeous evocation of youthful dreams and hints at a vulnerability and depth that awaited listeners to the album. ‘Handle Me’ and one of the album’s other highlights, the beautiful ‘Galway Bay’ are where the true magic lay. Coughlan addresses coming-to-terms with his diagnosis. “Had a vision of the future which suddenly disappeared, you got to handle me.”
He sings on ‘Handle Me’. “It’s Galway Bay, St Patrick’s Day, the reality’s here to stay. So I’m walking towards the seashore, but the seashore gets further away.” He sings on ‘Galway Bay’.
“There is a mystical spirit buried in their songs where traditional instruments nestle alongside modern samples and Gerry’s heart-tugging wall of guitar,” wrote the NME. “Gerry had a very precise way of playing with a great choice of chord, melody and sound in his guitar style which was very sympathetic to Donal’s lyrics and painted the perfect picture,” says O’Brien.
Sheehy thinks Coughlan was an exceptional songwriter: “I believe Donal was a lyrical genius. Every track on Kissing the Roof of Heaven had a way of creating familiarity and empathy but in Donal’s absolutely unique way. When he explained ‘Galway Bay’ it was difficult to take in the harsh reality of those lyrics.” O’Brien is in complete agreement: “There was no doubt that there was something special going on with Donal’s song writing, one look at the lyric sheet would affirm this, though their true meaning would only be revealed through time.”
Demos were recorded for a second album. “We’d sent the label, probably in excess of 30 songs,” recalls Leonard. “Maybe there was a record in those songs and with a little bit of skill it could have been a record.”
It wasn’t to be and the guitarist headed for New York eventually coming into Bowie’s orbit, something that he could never have imagined as he slept on Coughlan’s floor in Copenhagen years earlier. “Exactly, you know that chapter hadn’t been written absolutely,” reflects Leonard.
“I’ll tell you one thing though, even towards the end and when Donal was in a full care situation, we would just have the biggest laugh over stuff that went on in the Hinterland days and our little bit of touring and all the characters that were in our world. Because we had a lot of laughs for sure.”
- Gerry Leonard is among those joining the RTÉ Concert Orchestra to perform The Songs of David Bowie at 3Arena, Dublin, on March 2
stayed in New York. He played guitar on three Bowie albums: Heathen (2002), Reality (2003) and The Next Day (2013). He also co-wrote two songs on The Next Day. He has also worked with Cyndi Lauper, Suzanne Vega, Nina Nastasia, Laurie Anderson and others. He records under the name Spooky Ghost - a phrase his old friend Donal Coughlan once used to describe his guitar sound.
lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years, and passed away in 2016, at the age of 53.
is still producing music and runs The Production Suite in Dublin 2.
also produces music and runs Ocean Studios Ireland on Sheep's Head Peninsula on the Wild Atlantic Way.
- Paul McDermott’s podcast To Here Knows When – Great Irish Albums Revisited is available on all listening platforms
