Irish Examiner View: Brendan Bowyer
There is no equivalent of Brendan Bowyer, who has died in Las Vegas aged 81, in Ireland today. He and his peers were the first generation of Irish entertainers influenced by the rock ’n roll revolution.
Bowyer, who was born in Waterford but lived in America for almost 50 years, was a kind of halfway house between a traditional Irish tenor and his less formal, more animated American contemporaries.
He, with the Royal showband, was one of the stars of the showband era and provided the soundtrack for a generation beginning to test the limits of a deeply conservative society. The Royal was one of the most dynamic live acts of that era and drew massive crowds to ballrooms all across Ireland and Britain. Almost 60 years ago, in 1961, The Royal Showband won ‘Top Modern Dance Band’ in Britain. The Beatles were a support group during a Royal tour when Bowyer famously advised the four “to stick with it and you will make it”.
Bower may not have changed music as profoundly as The Beatles did, but in an Irish context, he was every bit as transformative.
