Culture That Made Me: Cork musician Joe Philpott of White Horse Guitar Club
Cork musician Joe Philpott, of the White Horse Guitar Club. Picture: Karen M Edwards
Joe Philpott, 52, grew up in Ballincollig, Cork. He co-founded Rubyhorse, an alt-rock band whose award-winning single charted in the US.
In 2012, he was a founding member of 11-man ensemble the White Horse Guitar Club.
The band has just released its second studio album, Sos Beag, and is on a nationwide tour, including De Barra’s in Clonakilty, Co Cork, October 18-19.
See: www.whitehorseguitarclub.com
My uncle Maurice Sheehan was a very well-known actor in Cork. He was 36 when he passed away.
He loved soundtracks like John Williams’s Star Wars and Superman. It’s why I was very drawn to instrumental orchestral movie soundtracks as a child.
I didn't realise what I was listening to. It grabbed me because the pictures I used to paint in my head was soundtrack stuff. It made my imagination come alive.
The flint moment for me was Live Aid. I remember being out in the pitch behind our house in Ballincollig with a soccer ball.
I knew it was going on because everyone was talking about it, but I didn't know what it was.
I came in. When I saw it on television, my jaw dropped. I spent the whole day and night watching it.
Every single band on the planet, bar one or two, was playing. You saw the amazing cultural, global reach music had. It came at me like a ton of bricks.
The stand-out performances were probably Queen, U2 and David Bowie, artists I wouldn't have known much about at 12 years of age.
I started to do a deep dive then into who they were, and started my record collection – the obsession with music had kicked in.
I formed Rubyhorse, my first band, with school friends in Spioraid Naoimh in Cork. It was the summer of 1986, the year after Live Aid.
We put on shows in school. Pretty soon, we started to gain a bit of traction. We got gigs in town at Sir Henry's. We were about 14, 15.
We got opening slots for bands like Something Happens, The Stunning. I remember one night we were stopped at the door.
We were still in our school uniforms going in for the sound check. We were walking in, and the bouncers were looking at us, going, “Lads, where are ye off to?” We were like, ‘We’re the band.”
I love Cónal Creedon’s work. I enjoy the local Cork aspect to it. He's got a brilliant turn of phrase.
There’s something homely about his way of saying things, a very colloquial way of expressing himself, almost dug out of the streets of Cork, but it also has a bit of a reach.
I've seen him speak and do readings so when I’m reading his books I can hear his voice – I can live in his head with him.
Iain McGilchrist is a Scottish philosopher. He has an interesting take on what's happening in the world today – and how we can reconnect with things.
We see all this horrible stuff going on in the world and we feel numb and helpless. What can we do?
Three things that matter to him: we need to reestablish community – that can be in our own vicinity, our own worlds; connect with nature, understand nature; and acknowledge there's something bigger than us at play.
To use a sporting analogy, we should leave the dressing room better than we found it.
I probably discovered R.E.M. on Dave Fanning’s radio show. Their songwriting is so strong.
If you listen to Peter Bucks’ guitar playing – and you take out Michael Stipe’s singing – there's a song in the music.
They have a sound – if you hear the start of an R.E.M. song on the radio, you know it’s them straight away.
The energy of them live also. There's something storied, too, about four guys who were friends since they were kids, who came up through the ranks together and then hopped into a transit van, touring around America, which is ultimately what I ended up doing.
I love music that has a sense of place and a landscape to it, which is why I love Brian Eno.
One of my favourite albums is If you listen to it in an airport, it's extraordinary because the airport becomes a movie.
Brian Eno practically invented ambient music – music which has that tranquil space aspect to it.
Everything in front of you changes because of what you're listening to. You’re not listening to music in the traditional way.
You're supposed to listen to it almost without listening to it.
It's supposed to be on in the background and then the foreground becomes a more three-dimensional or soulful experience and the more mundane the setting, the better.
I listened back to some Beatles’ music recently. From a songwriting and production point of view, it's extraordinary.
Some of the things that they did with George Martin have yet to be surpassed. Look at their catalogue, there hasn’t been a band as good as them since.
Then there's how the band came asunder and the tragedy of John Lennon being shot.
When I first listened to them, even though they were my parents’ music, I had a sense that that's the kind of blueprint for what you need to aspire to, to be a songwriter or a performer. They were the plan.
The spirit of George Harrison was a big part of who he became, like his generosity, for example.
Jeff Kramer, who was Rubyhorse’s manager at the time, picked him up from the airport in Los Angeles and he played him one of our tracks, on a tape.
He loved the song and agreed to play on it. When we heard his part, it floored us.
The awful thing is he died soon afterwards. It was the second or third last thing he recorded.
Having a Beatle on your record was an extraordinary thing for a bunch of shit-kickers from Bishopstown.
Growing up in Cork, Rory Gallagher was omnipresent. He was godlike.
The fact that his presence was always within earshot, within touch was an extraordinary thing.
He was an utter genius, this iconic guitar player who's influenced everybody from Eric Clapton to Slash from Guns N’ Roses, and he was from our streets.
I used to see him when I was a kid, walking around. One of my favourite things to watch is his documentary, Irish Tour ’74.
There are amazing shots of Cork, walking around Blackrock and down Patrick's Hill.
He’s got that swagger, the shoulders up, the gatch on him – that’s Rory.
Seeing Hothouse Flowers in Cork’s City Hall was special. They were huge at the time. They had gone into the stratosphere.
It was after that Eurovision thing when they performed Don't Go as the interval act in 1988. There was a sense this guy, Liam Ó Maonlaí, was extraordinary.
I've worked with Liam and played with him. There's something about Liam that's magical, this otherworldly presence, like trying to lasso the wind.
