Culture That Made Me: Eurovision winner Paul Harrington picks his touchstones
Paul Harrington is in Cork Opera House on Wednesday, April 8.
Paul Harrington, 65, grew up in Killester, Dublin. In 1994, he won the Eurovision Song Contest with Charlie McGettigan, performing He has gone on to perform in the world’s greatest music arenas, including Wembley Stadium and Madison Square Garden.
He will perform the popular Newstalk weekly series, The Lyric’s the Thing, at Cork Opera House, Wednesday, April 8.
Pink Floyd's is perfect from start to finish. It felt like a classic album in the ’70s when it was out. I also hadn't experienced that whole one track running into the next, that was interesting. Songs like Us and Them. The record is extraordinary. Even the little chit-chat at the end – there was this guy, it sounded like he had a weird Irish accent, saying something like, “There is no dark side of the moon. As a matter of fact, it's all dark.”
The standout tune for me of the 1970s is the Commodores’ How do you pick your favourite record of all time?
For me, this is my criteria: it’s probably the only song that as soon as I hear it, immediately, it's like a snap of a finger, I'm back to when I first heard it. I had a big transistor radio, holding it in my arm. I was sitting on a small wall on the Howth Rd, waiting on a bus, heading out to see my then girlfriend. It’s a moment in time.
I’ll never forget seeing Leo Sayer with a full band in the National Stadium. It was about 1977. It was the first time I'd seen a full band reproducing the records that I'd heard. He had a big brass section, doing tunes like Thunder in My Heart. It was a fantastic performance. He's an outrageous live singer and performer. I remember years later when I was a team captain on a TV show called The Lyrics Board, he was a guest on my team. Sitting at the piano with me, it took all my energy to try and calm him down. He was up on the seat. He had boundless energy.
A concert that absolutely floored me was Michael Jackson at Lansdowne Road around 1992. It was visually stunning. All the tunes were executed impeccably. Michael Jackson as a live performer was light years beyond almost anyone else. His live show was incredible. I know he did that Heal the World thing where the big globe came out. It was song after song after song. So powerful.
Jean-Dominique Bauby’s
is about a guy who's got locked-in syndrome. He had a high-powered gig as editor of Elle magazine in France. Overnight he couldn't move. Effectively, the only thing he could move was his eyes. Through perseverance and a speech therapist, he developed a Morse code for the alphabet with his eyelids blinking so he could dictate a book. There’s a scene where he describes a moment when he’s watching a programme on a communal TV in a hospital ward, something he was enjoying, taking his mind off the horror of [his predicament]. One of the nurses came in and said, “That's it. Lights out” and switched off the TV. Can you imagine that internal scream?
For my 50th birthday in 2010, friends brought me to The Gate Theatre to see starring Michael Gambon. It might have been the first time I was exposed to Beckett. It was one of the most extraordinary things I'd ever seen. Michael Gambon's voice was unique. We had a drink afterwards and Michael Colgan, from the Gate Theatre, brought Gambon out. We wound up chatting and bought him a jar. He was chatting to my wife. As we were leaving, his last words to her were, “Get pregnant. Have a child.” Now we have a six-year-old. She took his advice!
I read this book called My dad was a big reader. I remember saying to my dad, who was a big reader: “Daddy, I'll eat my hat if they don't make a movie out of this book.” And they did. The film had Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton in it. It was guys who came upon a light aircraft wreck. They investigated it. There were a couple of dead bodies inside, and a big bag of money. They took it. Of course, they started to slowly let different people in on the secret. Then it starts to tear them apart. It’s a caper. It’s brilliant.
When it comes to great songwriters, it's hard to look past Jimmy MacCarthy. What an extraordinary songwriter. So many classics. He’s so unassuming. It's interesting hearing him sing his own songs, which is often off-putting, if you hear certain songwriters, especially when you've heard the hits by other interpreters, singing their songs, but he’s amazing. I can only listen to him doing He's the only person who really understands it. is one of his most extraordinary pieces of work. It's enormously moving. He really connects you with the story.
Often, it takes great interpreters to unlock a song. I always need a way into a song. Whether it's, say, Johnny Cash singing, “I hurt myself today.” I was the guy who said, “Nine Inch what?” I didn’t get the original version. Or even Johnny Cash doing a U2 song, like singing – all of a sudden, I got that song.
The movie – with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges, directed by Terry Gilliam – has always stayed with me. It has one of the most extraordinary movie scenes ever. Amanda Plummer was Robin Williams’s object of desire. They are to meet amidst this hustle and bustle in Grand Central station, with people coming and going. He sees her. Then all the commuters take partners and start waltzing. It's an extraordinary film, an extraordinary story, beautifully told, with lovely light soundtrack moments.
Louis Theroux’s documentary is off the scale. He tracks down young folks who are making millions and being diabolically disrespectful to females and to anything that resembles rules and authority.
They live in their own world. They're stars in their own movies. It's interesting. There were times when he looked fragile to me, against these buffed, supercharged, invincible people. It's a horrible world. He’s kind of the documentary version of Bear Grylls getting into bed with a rattlesnake.
I listen to every week on BBC Radio 4. It's chaired by Michael Buerk who famously did the report in Ethiopia for Live Aid back in the day. He was a newscaster for donkey's years. A terrific guy. He has a subject, a bunch of experts, what they call witnesses, and they come on and debate, arguing the toss whether something is moral. For example, is it morally right to invade Iran?
