Farewell to a cultural icon and the voice of Dublin

HE may have been described as having a voice like a bullfrog with a hangover, but it was considered the voice of Dublin and made him a cultural icon.

Born in Dun Laoghaire in 1934 the son of a carpenter, the young Drew left school at 17 after which he had a number of jobs including electrician’s apprentice, vacuum cleaner salesman and kitchen porter before heading off to Spain to teach English in the 1950s.

While there his love of music, already a passion, grew and he returned to Dublin where he and Barney McKenna would perform informal sessions at O’Donoghue’s pub on Merrion Row.

The Dubliners came to fruition, initially as the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, when the pair met Luke Kelly and Ciaran Burke.

Over the next 30 years while the line-up would change, songs such as Seven Drunken Nights and Finnegan’s Wake meant they were an internationally renowned force no matter who was behind the microphones.

The universal appeal of Seven Drunken Nights was made clear when it gained the band an appearance on Britain’s Top of the Pops.

The year after The Dubliners formed Ronnie Drew married Deirdre McCartan, the woman who would bear him two children.

“We had our reception in O’Donoghue’s pub and finished up that night in a restaurant in Lincoln Place drinking wine out of a teapot,” said Drew.

He left the band in 1974 to work on solo material and dabble in the theatre.

However, he was back at the helm by 1979 and remained there until 1995.

It was during that stint that Ronnie Drew and the band’s unique brand of music was brought to a whole new generation thanks to the 1987 collaboration with the Pogues on The Irish Rover.

One of the most noticeable characteristics which made it clear that Ronnie Drew was unwell in recent years was the lack of the trademark beard.

Far from being an affected appendage the beard had actually been grown on doctor’s orders due to a skin complaint.

The other characteristic which stuck in a number of people’s heads was his ability to enjoy a drink.

“I had a wild life for many years, getting locked up and getting thrown out of places,” he admitted in interview before recounting a story of when he fell asleep on a park bench in New York once.

“I had $1,000 dollars in my pocket. I remember this black fella woke me up and said ‘You don’t want to be falling asleep in New York’. I went ‘Oh Jaysus’ and immediately checked my readies.”

While he travelled around the world promoting his music, he lived most of his life in Greystones with his beloved wife Deirdre, whose death in 2007 had a profound effect upon him.

It came at a terrible time, within months of him being diagnosed with throat cancer.

Ronnie Drew is survived by his two children, Phelim and Cliodhna, and five grandchildren.