After All to Happy Busman: The Frank and Walters in five great songs
The Frank & Walters: Niall and Paul Lenihan with Ashley Keating at Dolans Warehouse, Limerick, in 2003. Picture: Sean Curtin/Press 22
It’s going on for 30 years since indie band the Frank and Walters played a triumphant homecoming show at Cork City Hall. They did so after a breathless rise to the top of alternative rock that saw the group heralded as the one of the most exciting new voices in indiedom and which culminated in their January 1993 appearance on where they performed their hit and chinwagged with fellow performer Paul McCartney.
Three decades or so later, the Franks are marking that anniversary with another concert at the historic venue which has hosted everyone from Thin Lizzy to Björk. It will be a celebration of their longevity and of the evergreen magic of which has featured on Cork-set comedy and has been embraced as a terrace anthem by Cork City and Cork GAA fans.
Ahead of that gig on December 20, lead singer and songwriter, Paul Linehan, shares the story behind five signature Frank’s anthems.
"I feel that it’s kind of not my song anymore. It’s been adopted by so many people – I feel the other songs are my own or the band’s. After all – it seems to belong to somebody else. When I’m singing it, sometimes I have to remind myself that I wrote it – that I am part of it. Sometimes I forget. In order to sing it with conviction, I have to remember that I did write it.
After All was a song I wrote about the girlfriend I was going out with at the time in 92/93. Her name was Katie. She was English. I was on the phone with her. She was in London, and I was in Ireland. We had some argument – I forget what it was about. It might have been that I wasn’t there enough. I went home. I was a bit upset, I suppose. That song came straight away, I wanted to fix it in my head – to fix the problem.
The whole idea is that you will fight and have arguments in a relationship, but at the end of the day, you love each other, and that’s the most important thing. It then became a celebration of love and not taking what you have for granted – just being happy that you have someone to love and that they love you. Just rejoicing.
I wrote the start of it in Bishopstown. I was in London about a month later. I played it to [music journalist] Colm O’Callaghan. He said, “It needs a middle-eight.” I remember being in the room with him – I came up with the middle eight there and then [the verse that begins, “there are times I get distracted girl…”]. I honestly don’t know how I did it – I just messed with the chords and this thing came out.
After All was a very easy song to write – every single part so easy to record. Everything was easy about it – it was like it was meant to be. There were no stumbling blocks whatsoever – in the lyrics, the melody, the production. It was almost like it was pre-destined to come into the world.
It’s an honour that it has become a terrace song. I’m flabbergasted at how far it has come. It is basically the reason why I can make a living. Without that song, I think we wouldn’t have the profile we have now. It was rejuvenated by it’s been in movies, in a recent ad with Roy Keane. It has helped our profile enormously throughout the years. It has helped us go out and play to people – that’s the song that is the catalyst for people to come and listen to the Frank and Walters.
I’m very, very grateful for it to have happened. It’s strange – I almost think, ‘what if I never had that argument on the phone?’ Would that song have ever existed? It’s very strange – how songs come to be. What you’re doing is capturing a moment. Moments come and go. You might not get that moment again. If you’re not there to receive them… I have a feeling they won’t happen."
"Tony Cochrane has about three different meanings for me. I wrote the song in 1994 – I’d just broken up with my girlfriend. I was a bit lonely. I was thinking of [the fictional] Tony Cochrane as the man who would walk with his son in the St Patrick’s Day Parade.
I envied his life as a person who had a wife, had a family, had children. And I didn’t. It seemed to be having it all in my opinion – having a wife and kids, being happy to walk along the parade with his son. Later, when we were chosen as the Grand Marshals for the parade [in 2024], I then walked in the parade with my son. Life imitating art – it was weird.
I also see myself in the song as an old man looking back at his life. It’s a bit ambiguous – ambiguous and psychedelic. There is a reference to the “The Barrack Street Band” – they would be in the playing parade. There is a nostalgic feeling to the song. One of the most nostalgic sounds that there is the sound of a brass band, even more so than strings for some reason.
I don’t know why: it seems to have that feel for it. Sometimes we write about places that are far away. Why not write about places that are on your doorstep [ie Barrack Street]? You think faraway hills are greener. Barrack Street and stuff like that… I wrote it when I came home from London – it was one of the first songs I wrote after coming back to Cork."
"It would have been written in 1989. I wrote that in the jamming room on Sullivan’s Quay – right next to Barrack Street, coincidentally. The bassline came to me first.
When I wrote that song, I was trying to sum up what the Frank and Walters are as a band. It’s funny – for me, it doesn’t sum us up at all. I was trying to be a bit deeper. What came out was something very, very funny – I was trying to capture something that had some kind of meaning.
It’s a silly song. We did it for the laugh. We were inspired by bands like The Monkees. – why don’t we make our own theme song? It was formed from the bassline, and that was it. When we’re doing a gig, and we feel a bit of light entertainment is required – if the crowd needs to be cajoled – we’d throw it in to lighten up the mood and bring a small bit of happiness."
"I wrote because I was lonely at the time. We used to have a busman on the number five bus [from Bishopstown to the city centre]– he was very friendly. When you’d get on, he’d welcome you. Whatever it was he had, he just cheered you up.
I felt there was something in that: there are a lot of lonely people in the world, a lot of elderly people who have lost their partner and are living alone. To go out and meet someone on the bus who was friendly could make their day.
People who work in shops with the public can make or break somebody’s day by being nice to them or nasty to them. When you’re dealing with the public, there is an obligation to be a bit sensitive to certain people who might be having a bad day. And if you can, be friendly to them – especially elderly people or those who are lonely.
The bus driver heard the song. His name in the lyrics is Andy James, which is fiction. His real name was Frank Brett. He was delighted. The funny thing is, after that, he got the route to Crosshaven because he was switched. I’m living in Crosshaven now, which is funny. I don’t know where he is now, but he’s a lovely man. Really jolly and happy, always smiling.
My brother [Niall, who departed the Franks in 2004] would have come up with the guitar riff. The song would have been written by me. I normally bring the song into the jamming room – Ashley [Keating, Frank and Walters drummer] would put the drums on, and my brother Niall would do the riffs, any bit of picking, or counter melodies that would be needed.
We recorded it in London in Elephant Studios in Wapping, with Edwyn Collins [formerly of 1980s indie critical darlings Orange Juice]. At that session, we recorded five songs for an EP. The fifth was – which we left off the EP as we felt that could be a single on its own."
"In the early 1990s, we wrote the songs that came to us – it was just what happened. We just did it. What we tried to do at that time was to be as individual as we could. That was a really important thing – to be as unique as we can. If we had a melody that sounded like anyone else’s, we’d scrap it.
We would focus on the stuff that was unique. We were signed to [London independent label] Go! Discs at the time. They sent the song out to different scriptwriters, and basically, one of them came back with the idea of basing the video on and going to Salzburg. It sounded good to us. We went there, made the video, and had a great time. Salzburg was absolutely beautiful.
Go! Discs were indie in 1992. It was later that it was bought by PolyGram. Before that we had been with [London-Irish label] Setanta – Setanta kind of sold us to Go! Discs, but they were still kind of managing us. There was an input from Setanta. Keith Cullen [Setanta’s founder] had the idea of setting up a label in London to sign Irish bands.
A lot of emerging Irish bands – that would be the first stop outside Ireland. You had Solid Records and Mother Records in Ireland. In England, Setanta was the one where you would have a chance of being signed. We sent over a couple of demo tapes. Keith liked them and signed us from there.
It was a good label – very low budget. Keith was living in his apartment in Camberwell, and we would sleep there when we went over first to record. When we first signed, there was no money involved. He agreed to put out the records and pay for the records, so that’s what we did. We were delighted."
- The Frank and Walters play Cork City Hall, Saturday December 20. Tickets here
