Culture That Made Me: Gareth O’Callaghan on Thin Lizzy, Brendan Kennelly and Silas Mariner
Gareth O’Callaghan Picture Andres Poveda
Born in 1961, Gareth O’Callaghan grew up on Dublin’s Navan Road. In 1989, he joined 2FM, spending 15 years as its afternoon radio show host. He published A Day Called Hope: A Personal Journey Beyond Depression in 2003, one of two memoirs. He has also published several novels. In 2018, he retired as a DJ following a diagnosis with multiple system atrophy, but returned to broadcasting in 2022. He lives in Cork. He presents a Saturday morning show on Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio.
The first person I ever heard singing on radio was Dusty Springfield. I was six years of age. I was in my dad's car. He had this longwave radio. It was a Sunday afternoon. I remember saying, “Wow, dad, she's a beautiful singer.” That was the start of it – when I fell in love with music.
Fire and Rain by James Taylor is a favourite song from childhood. I didn't understand the lyrics, but I knew it was a song about pain and redemption. The words registered with feelings. His voice was forlorn, lonely. The solitude in the song: “Just yesterday mornin’, they let me know you were gone.” I had mental health issues from the time I was able to talk. I always had this melancholy, this sense that I was slightly unhinged and away from the party and I was living out there on a smaller planet, looking in at all the fun on the big planet. I started looking for songs like Fire and Rain.
Gilbert O'Sullivan was singing similar songs as well about feeling let down, and you left me, this kind of thing. There was always a commonality in these songs. You were either leaving somebody or somebody left you. It was the stories within songs that gripped me, and obviously the melodies.
Around 1980, I was working for a pirate radio station from a little ramshackle studio in a Dublin hotel. I was sitting there playing songs. This guy knocks on the door. It was Phil Lynott. I’m a big Thin Lizzy fan. He said, “Can I use your jacks?” I said: “You can. The door doesn’t work on it, but you’re safe.” Two minutes later, he came out. He said, “Thanks a lot. Are you on the radio? Do you want to interview me?” I said, “Yeah, great! Sit down.” So he sat down and we chatted away. Afterwards, he said, “Are you coming to the gig?” I said, “No, I couldn't get tickets.” He said: “I’ll sort that out for you. When you’re finished your show, come down to the side of the stage and give me a wave.” That was it – I was in for the night. It was brilliant.
George Eliot's Silas Marner has stayed with me since reading it at school. The old bachelor weaver who adopts a tiny baby left on his doorstep. He raises this child in a village full of nosey people. You could say it became the blueprint for a soap opera like Emmerdale. That baby turned this individual's life around, and made him a more sociable creature. It's a novel about finding yourself, trying to come to terms with who that person is, to be happy and content with who you are. It’s powerful.
One of the greatest poets in modern America is Mary Oliver. She has a beautiful book of poetry called A Thousand Mornings. She wrote about real-life situations, things that impressed her, worried her, made her nervous. Through her poetry in that collection, for example, she reassured the reader that every morning you wake up differently because every day is different, whether you realise that or not. If this morning's not great, tomorrow morning will be better. That positivity comes across in her poetry and she has such a lovely way of writing.
My favourite Irish poet is Brendan Kennelly. He wrote about everyday things but he raised them to a level that made them very impressive. During his life journey, Brendan was faced with addiction issues, depression and anxiety. I remember when he read Begin on the Late Late Show one night in 1994. It was captivating. When you're down, remind yourself there's an opportunity to begin, to begin again, begin again. When you feel like giving up, don't, because you’ll have an opportunity to begin again.
Bruce Springsteen at Slane Castle in 1985 was amazing. It was my first time at Slane – that sloping hill looking down at this giant stadium. He was the coolest man in the world at that stage, probably still is. He’s one of the greatest talents in rock music, going back to the 1970s. It’s how he connects to the crowd. Every song he sings is packed with either an incident or a history of an event, or how he feels about specific aspects of humanity and politics. Those stories he tells really connect to people.
Years later, Bruce Springsteen was in Dublin promoting his Tunnel of Love album. I got to interview him in the old Burlington Hotel. I had my little tape recorder and microphone, and spare batteries in case it went belly up. I was trying to do the buttons. My hands were shaking with nerves so badly he just took the tape recorder off me and he pressed play and record, and he said, “Now, we’re sucking diesel.” And we laughed and laughed.
Paul Brady's music is so diverse he can move from, say, Hard Station, which is probably one of my all-time favourite albums to doing a duet with Ronan Keating. This is the Long Goodbye is a beautiful song. Tina Turner has recorded his songs. He’s duetted with Bonnie Raitt. There's a sweetness about him that I love, but I love that he has a cheekiness about him as well that also comes across in his music.
Gay Byrne was a skilled people watcher. I became close to him during the three years I worked on his radio show. He listened to people and formed his opinion based on how they expressed themselves, what they said, what was behind what they said. Facial features and reactions were important to him.
The interviews that intrigued him most were human interest stories, from people who went through the most traumatic events like when he rang that woman, Rita Hanley in Togher, Cork, to tell her she had won a car, and her daughter Lynda had been knocked down by a car the previous night.
A moment of joviality and skittishness suddenly changed, and he was that man in charge of this situation. How he did it was extraordinary.
Gerry Ryan was one of the greatest stars of radio. Sadly he wasn’t around for long enough. He had this incredible ability to open the private doors of strangers’ lives who, as a result of the hardship and injustice of what they'd been through, became household names. Lavinia Kerwick [the first survivor of a convicted rapist in Ireland to dispense with her anonymity] was probably the greatest of those interviews.
