Guitars Continued

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I wrote in a previous piece about my first guitar. In those days we didn't get our Christmas presents until Christmas morning and I can remember my child like anticipation of this present to end all presents. My Dad had purchased my Egmund Electric guitar from a company called Walkers in Dublin and it appeared like magic on Christmas morning 1963. In my naivety, I didn't realise that in order to reap the full benefit of an electric guitar I would have to have an amplifier so to the delight of my family I was not able to make a big noise straight away. However I accidentally discovered that if I pushed the guitar against my bed frame the sound transmitted to the bedroom's wooden floor and the whole floor acted as one massive soundboard.

In the days following Christmas I practiced day and night until I could play my first song, " Misery" by Lennon and McCartney. It was an aptly named song because I'm sure that was what I inflicted on my friends and family.  Just before New Year's Eve 1963 I was at an afternoon hop in the Rock Hall, Ballyshannon. I think Liam Travers was playing and some of my friends suggested to Liam that I get up and sing. I can still remember the terror and thrill of singing, " Where have all the flowers gone" that Sunday afternoon in the Rock Hall. People actually clapped!

One day coming from school I fell into step with John Hannigan who I had known all through my childhood and was startled to discover that he actually played guitar too.  He was the proud owner of a Connoisseur electric guitar which I had seen hanging in Cecil King's Music Box in Ballyshannon. We hit it off instantly and soon were meeting in each other's houses to play.  John figured a way to plug our guitars into his mother's big old radio set, which became our very first guitar amplifier.

Johnny Ferguson who lived on Market Street had a set of drums and we immediately formed a beat group with Johnny as the main man. Michael Dalton who played piano joined us in Johnny's house for our first rehearsal. What a racket we made. Michael was playing a cordovox (one of the first electronic accordions) lying on its side. Briege Curran (Now Kelly) very kindly loaned her instrument to Michael. Briege played professionally with the Assaroe Ceili Band and the Cordovox was a very expensive piece of equipment. People were so kind in those days.

 After a few rehearsals Johnny's shortcomings as a drummer became obvious and like Pete Best, the Beatles' first drummer, he was unceremoniously given the boot. Johnny went on to subsequently own the Music Box and has since emigrated. Jimmy Rafferty whose uncle Tom Gallagher was a seasoned drummer, replaced Johnny and thus we had the nucleus of our first beat group, which we called "The Soundstorms". I remember Jimmy borrowing £110 from the Credit Union to buy his first set of drums and Donal Hannigan, John's brother, painting the "Soundstorms" logo on the bass drum. Donal went on to be the proprietor of his own painting business. Jimmy Rafferty still plays drums to this day.

Soon, the late Danny Kerrigan joined us as lead vocalist and we played for a year or so at any venue that would let us take the stage. Jimmy Rafferty's family were sacristans in the local St Patrick's Church. I remember on one occasion we borrowed the church public address system to play in the Abbey Ballroom. Of course we overloaded it and blew the speakers. Father Young sounded very distorted for weeks after that and I don't think anyone ever knew why. I hope this piece doesn't result in me getting a bill for the repair of one Church PA system.

There were several other groups in the area at the time.  "The Erratics" played Rhythm and Blues and featured David Murphy on rhythm guitar, Micheál Travers on lead guitar, the late Eamonn Travers on bass and Jimmy Melly on drums. Niall McBride was an occasional member. It was through the Erratics that I first heard the music of people like Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Boy Williamson. They were much older than us and tended to look down their noses at our feeble efforts. Another band called "Federal Aviation" was based in Bundoran and featured Lawrence Loughlin on vocals, Martin Loughlin on guitar, Jimmy Gallagher (now "Thin on top") on bass. I can't recall who the drummer was. Jimmy Gallagher was later to join our group and regularly thumbed a lift the five miles from Bundoran and Ballyshannon with his Bass tucked under his arm and his Bass amp by his side. There's dedication for you.

There was great rivalry between all the groups in the area and we were all taught a lesson in humility in St Patrick's Hall in Bundoran when all three groups came together in a three band session in the spring of 1965. A certain ginger headed singer guitarist was to wipe the stage with us all that night. I can still remember his first song. It was Elvis Presley's "One night with you" sung like I'd never heard it sung before. He played a cream coloured Fender Mustang guitar and, as they used to say then, he could make it talk. That baby faced, bespectacled singer was none other than the great Paul Brady. That night Paul stunned us all into submission when he sang and played every classic rock and blues song known to man and left us all sickened with thoughts of " Back to the drawing board".

We spent many happy hours picking and strumming over the years 1963 until 1966 and, I'm sure, drove the people of the area bonkers as we learned our craft. So many people helped us along in those early years. People like Sean Gallagher, Liam Travers, Tom Gallagher, Donal Hannigan and many more contributed so much to our progress and I am forever grateful for their indulgence. Hopefully I'll get to continue this story in future columns.

Bundoran 1964

I started my first summer job in early July 1964 at the Olympia Amusement Arcade, which imposed itself on the main street of Bundoran like some large Las Vegas gambling casino. Bundoran in those days thronged with visitors mostly from Northern Ireland and Scotland with a few home from England on their annual holidays. It was a bustling place with lots of souvenir shops and cafes to cater for all tastes.  It had the best of both worlds with its beaches on one hand and its many entertainment centres on the other. Nothing changes.

 Arcade manager Denis Porter welcomed me. He was an affable man from Derry who looked at the world through spectacles that made his eyes look twice as big as they actually were. It was about 8 o clock in the evening and I was led through the mass of flickering twittering slot machines shooting galleries and La Boule counters into a large room where bingo was in progress.

I didn't know what bingo was, believe it or not, but I was soon to learn the complexities of the game and became a dab hand at collecting the thrupenny bits, calling the numbers and paying out the prizes. The highlight of the night for me was when the members of the McFadden Family Theatre Company who presented shows nightly in their Portable Theatre would arrive for the last few games of the evening. Harry McFadden and his wife seemed so exotic to me as they entered the bingo room still wearing their stage make up. Even then I was slightly smitten with the showbiz bug.

I would start work every morning at 10 o clock, having hitched a lift from Ballyshannon. Having cleaned out the bingo room using a mixture of Dettol and sawdust to catch all the rising dust, sweet papers and cigarette butts, the rest of the day would be spent polishing up the "One armed Bandits" and all other shiny gambling machines in the arcade.

Sometimes I was asked to work in the shooting gallery, which was my favourite job. Customers were given four shots for six pence and had to shoot down targets on a moving rail. I became a real sharp shooter myself as I used to practice every chance I got. The real skill was to load up four guns and shoot all the targets down and keep the moving rail empty. It was great fun and when I got good at it I could show off to my hearts content.

The biggest incident I can remember was the shooting of Mary Farmer (now Mary Gallagher – wife of Sean Gallagher of the Quarrymen fame). She was always in and out of the arcade in those days and when the shooting gallery attendant (not me I hasten to add) accidentally discharged one of the guns into her cheek it was the talk of the town for weeks. Thankfully Mary recovered and survived to marry Sean and give birth to some of the finest musicians in Bundoran – Boxtie.

There was an automatic photograph machine, which was looked after by Chris Loughlin and this had to be cleaned out every week and all the chemicals used for developing the photographs replaced. The chemicals stank to high heaven and in retrospect we were lucky inhaling the fumes didn't poison us. Chris's brother Martin also worked at the arcade and he kept the female customers happy as he gyrated to the strains of his idol Elvis Presley on the jukebox. God how I envied his Elvis quiff and his ability to attract the girls.

My normal working day was from 10 am until 12 midnight when bingo ended. I had two afternoons off per week. I received a weekly wage of £4 and this seemed to me an absolute fortune. I remember I bought a pair of "Beatle Boots" with Cuban heels and twenty Marlboro cigarettes out of my first week's wages and felt like a real "Ted" walking up the main street of Bundoran in the most uncomfortable footwear I had ever worn. We suffered for our art in those days.

Life was simple in those great Bundoran days. Larry Cunningham was in the English charts with his "A tribute to Jim Reeves". The Astoria Ballroom had dancing seven nights a week – Admission was five shillings during the week and seven and six at the weekend. Girls from the Falls Road and the Bogside strolled the streets in their "fab" mod clothes and for a guy of fourteen it was heaven. I have so much to thank Ken Page, Denis Porter, Jim Gorman, Gerry McKeirnan and all the rest of the people at the Olympia Amusements for bringing me gently into the real world. 

 I have had a love affair with guitars since the late 1950s. It's hard to explain what it is about them but how my life has panned out was largely governed by my involvement with guitars and guitar music. Sad I know, but there it is. Guitars have dictated so much of how I have spent my days and to a certain extent still do. I rarely spend a day where I don't commune with my guitar and have withdrawal symptoms if a day goes by without at least seeing one. It's not that I'm a great player it's just that I love to play.

I think the first guitar I ever saw was on a free playing card, which came with LM chewing gum back in the late 1950s bought in Pat Gaffney's sweet emporium on the Back Street in Ballyshannon. Don Everly was clutching it to his chest in a picture with his brother Phil and although I had never heard of the Everly Brothers I thought the guitar looked really cool.  It was a black jumbo Gibson, a guitar, which has become synonymous with the Everly Brothers. I have to say that I thought the DA haircuts looked cool too. The whole package was just brilliant.

There's something about the look of a guitar that has always attracted me-Elvis slinging his guitar almost phallically, Hank Marvin using it as some kind of a gun or instrument of destruction or Chet Atkins just playing the dam thing so well. The late Cecil King Junior of the Donegal Democrat decided to go into the music business and, before he opened the Music Box which was just off the Diamond in Ballyshannon, he displayed the first guitar I ever saw "in the flesh" as it were in the front office of the Donegal Democrat. It was green with white Hawaiian palm trees painted on the body. It looked so right. I used to stop at the Democrat office every day just to gaze at it.

A local guy, I think his name was Michael Doherty, who was the son of the Town Clerk bought it. He lived right at the top of Cluain Barron and one day he let me hold it. I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't play it straight away but was smitten by the feel of it in my hands.  I often wonder what became of that green guitar that left such an impression on me back in 1961.

 The next time I saw a guitar up close was when Liam Travers from Bundoran played one in a talent contest in the Rock Hall in Ballyshannon.. He just bowled me over. It was a big shiny blue Formica topped guitar with three pickups and he had it plugged into a big WEM amplifier and he could sing too. I seem to remember him singing " Sea of Heartbreak". I was to get to know Liam in later years and he was a great help to me when I was getting started in the music scene. Liam Travers continues to entertain around Bundoran till this day.

When Cecil King eventually opened the Music Box, which was a shop that specialised in selling records, sheet music and guitars. He stocked acoustic guitars, which cost three pounds ten shillings (£3.50 or about €4.45) and I tried to persuade my dad to buy me one. He wasn't for turning as a certain woman once said so I persuaded Arthur Greene, my best pal, to buy one with his County Council Scholarship money and he did. Arthur struggled with trying to learn to play and eventually I asked him to lend me the guitar, which he kindly did. I'll be forever grateful to Arthur for that gesture. It wasn't a great guitar but I learned a few chords and convinced my dad that it would be a good idea to buy me a guitar for Christmas.

It was an Egmund double cutaway solid body electric guitar and, even though I tried to convince myself that it wasn't, it was the most ugly guitar ever seen. It was what Sally Gallagher used to call " Lamb Skitter Green" with a garish white plastic pick guard cum pickup piece. It was very difficult to play because it was made from very inferior materials but it was mine and I loved it. Of course I had no amplifier that Christmas morning and didn't have for a long time. However I discovered that if I pressed it very closely to the wooden frame of my bed, the bed and the floor became a huge sound board and made quite a big noise. It was the best Christmas of my life. I owned my first guitar and in future instalments I'll continue the story of my life with guitars.

The Narrow Gauge

I was blessed to live opposite the CDR Narrow Gauge Railway station on the Donegal Road in Ballyshannon when I was growing up. As children it was a huge part of our lives. The stationmaster Mr Hugh McMahon and his  family were always a big part of local life. A former stationmaster, although before my time, was a Mr Patterson who was the father of the hugely successful Pattersons singing group who were regulars on BBC Television's the "Morecambe and Wise Show" in the 1960s and 1970s.

We spent many of our childhood days playing in and around the station. What we used to call the "station rocks", a rocky, hilly area beside the station, was ideal territory for games of Cowboys and Indians that lasted for days. The little rail bus used to travel through a gorge in the station rocks and we would pretend we were outlaws like Jesse James or Sundance Kid robbing the train. It was just like in the movies. I ran with the McGarrigle and the McBride gang from Slate Row – an honery bunch ! The McGarrigles always had great guns, which were sent from relations in America and which were exact replicas of the real thing and I envied them, having only the "Lone Star" silver guns myself.

When the warm weather came in May and June my mother used to pack us all on to the rail bus after school at ten to four in the afternoon and for four pence each we could buy a return ticket to Rossnowlagh. Joe Thompson, the driver, would set off at a steady pace making stops at Creevy and Coolmore before arriving at Rossnowlagh. We often got off at Creevy but it was a bit of a walk from the stop to the pier. Mostly we continued to Rossnowlagh where the train stopped on the hill overlooking the Franciscan Friary. We could hardly contain ourselves as we raced down the stony road to the beach. The effect of Rossnowlagh beach is still as invigorating to me today as it was then.

We spent many afternoons on Rossnowlagh beach running in and out of the water, making sand castles and feasting on sand dusted banana sandwiches before beginning the long trek up the Friary Hill to the railway stop at the top. Often, if we had money, we would buy Lucan Ice Cream wafers in Gordon's shop. Lucan ice cream had a very distinctive taste, which I loved although it wasn't everyone's preference. Tired and weary from our day we passed the time waiting for the return train putting our ears to the tracks to see if we could hear it coming. Trips to Rossnowlagh on the narrow gauge were just fantastic.

Of course we had lots more fun in and around the CDR Railway station. With the big turntable to ride on and sometimes a hand operated buggy what more could a boy want? Often Danny Bannigan let us operate the signals in the elevated signal box. Sometimes a steam train would arrive from Letterkenny, which was really exciting. It's hard to believe that you could in those days take a train from Ballyshannon to Letterkenny and onwards to Derry if you so wished and travel through the magnificent mountainous scenery of Donegal.

In late summer we often walked the track to the Washpool picking blackberries and mushrooms from the fields along the way. Many's the pleasant summer afternoon was spent in this way and even in March, Arthur Greene's mother, Alice, would bring us along the track collecting shamrock for St Patrick's Day as we sang " I'm looking over a four leafed clover" being careful not to bring home clover by mistake.

In 1959 the last train pulled out of Ballyshannon CDR Railway station and I can remember how sad we all were to see it go. Bangers were put on the tracks to send off the big steam train and the little rail bus piloted by Joe Thompson followed on. Of course we continued to play around the station for a few more years. When Hurricane Debbie nearly blew away the Station office, the signal box and the storehouse in 1961 the writing was on the wall for the station and it finally fell into decay and it was just too dangerous for us to play around. The narrow gauge railway will live forever in my memory and I still recall the fun we had when it was there. Maybe some day they'll restore it and we can relive our wonderful memories.

The day the circus came to town.

When we were children the arrival of the circus in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, where I grew up, was one of the biggest events of the year. Our winter entertainment was provided by people like Cyril Curran whose Assaroe Ceilidh Band would be off the road for Lent. Cyril would often put on Lenten Variety Shows in the Rock Hall with people like Micilin Gillespie taking part in sketches and the Slevin Sisters providing the music. Of course we were all allowed to go to see our local drama group, the Premier Players annual production  or the Balyshannon Musical Society's presentation of "The Mikado", "HMS Pinafore" or whatever extravaganza they were presenting. These were always great Winter entertainment but the highlight of the year for us wide-eyed kids in those days was the Circus.

The circus usually came on a day in May or June and the thrill of seeing the brightly coloured caravans arrive in the Fair Green is indescribable. We lived very close to the Fair Green so we would gulp down our lunches and spend the last fifteen minutes of our lunch break from school wandering through the site watching the very exotic men and women of the circus going about their business. They usually spoke with foreign accents, wore very colourful clothes and were quite dismissive of us intruding into their private lives. Local "muscley men" were recruited to raise the big top and to watch the whole thing come together was fascinating as sledge hammers were used to drive home the guide pins and huge thick ropes were hauled in unison to raise the enormous  coloured canvas up the wooden poles.

The animals grazed happily on the grass of the Fair Green and we could hear the roars and screams of the caged animals, which were usually kept out of sight of the general public. One year, the circus elephant did a massive evacuation of its bowels in Mrs Greene's front garden and she had enough manure to grow vegetables for the rest of the season. It was really difficult to leave it all behind to go back to school when our lunch break was over.

School over, it was straightaway to the Fair Green with our shillings clasped firmly in our eager hands. We queued up to the red and yellow box office where we were relieved of our money by an ear ringed lady and guided to our seats by liveried usherettes. The smell of horse dung was always the first thing we noticed as we entered the tent and took our seats which were really long planks linked in rows with ropes and bolts. Health and safety was a low priority in those days. There were more expensive seats at ringside for the big knobs.

The band, which usually had about six or seven musicians, struck up and soon  Ringmaster Teddy Fossett or Tom Duffy introduced the show with a fanfare of trumpets and the words " Ladies and Gentlemen , Boys and Girls …..". Horses with girls in very skimpy tutus standing on top of them were followed by tightrope walkers, trapeze artists and of course clowns. Occasionally there was a seal trainer or a man and woman with a troupe of clever dogs. The clowns usually asked for volunteers from the audience. Volunteers would be made look ridiculous as they were kicked up the backside or doused with a bucket of water, which turned out to be a bucket of confetti. During the interval tubs of ice cream would be sold by gorgeous girls who had earlier thrilled us on the Flying trapeze or the high wire.

The finale would have a reprise of the horses, ponies, clowns and tumblers of every description. There was usually a raffle for free passes to the evening show. The moustachioed Teddy Fossett would always ask us all to tell our parents how much we enjoyed ourselves and encourage them to come to the evening performance. The two hours would have simply flown by and as we all filed out we knew we would relive every minute in the months to come.

We always felt really low passing through the Fair Green the following day to see the empty yellowed field where such a wonderfully colourful event had taken place the day before. The day the circus came to town was always the highlight of our childhood year and it's good to know that Fossett's Circus still tours to this day with Teddy Fossett's daughter Marion now carrying on the tradition. Watch out for the circus at a venue near you and relive the innocence of your childhood again.

Jeans Forty-three years wearing them.

I think the first pair of denim jeans I ever saw must have been in the film

Jailhouse Rock when Elvis Presley cavorted about the screen with his jailbird buddies and sang one of the best Rock n Roll songs of all time. There was something about the way they looked that hooked not only me but also millions of young people all over the world.  They seemed to symbolise the rebellious nature of a whole generation of young people from the mid fifties on.

I think the first pair of jeans I saw On the flesh as it were was in about 1962 when a guy whose name I cant recall was home from England on holidays. They were classic blue denim with the obligatory 2-inch turn up at the bottom, which was a lighter shade of blue than the rest. They also had the orange stitching on the leg seams and pockets with copper studs on the pocket joints. I can recall clearly that he wore them with a pair of black winkle picker shoes and white socks. He also sported a Brylcreamed coif, a jet-black shirt with the collar turned up and boy did he look cool. I wanted to be him!

September came and I pestered my parents to buy me a pair of jeans and eventually my mother came home with a brown paper parcel of jeans on approbation from Tom Culkins shop. You cannot imagine my disappointment on watching her open the parcel of Jeans to see that they were jeans allright - but black! There was a cardboard tag stuck to one of the back pockets with yellow lettering stating Wrangler Work Jeans so they were jeans but BLACK???

Theyre all Tom has said my mother And Ive tried Slevins and Stephens as well.  They were still jeans I supposed and I was happy to compromise. Having tried them on, they were a reasonable fit, if a bit wide and about two inches too long in the leg. My mother wanted to take them up but of course I protested that I could turn them up. She couldnt understand this but relented. I remember that instead of the orange stitching as on blue jeans there was green stitching but I still thought they looked OK.

On my first day back at school I felt so it parading around the playground in my new jeans and the other guys in their Terylene grey trousers gazed on in envy. Suddenly a harsh voice reached my ears. McGettigan, have you pretensions of being the new caretaker here? It was Brother Robert who wanted to know why I was wearing overalls to school. Theyre not overalls I pleaded, Theyre jeans!

What, may I ask are you talking about he retorted.

Incredibly, in 1962 someone hadnt heard of jeans but it was true. I was sent home to put on proper trousers.

Still, I persisted with the black jeans out of school hours for all that term. They were actually rather uncomfortable and became baggy at the knees after wearing them for a while and certainly werent leg hugging like the ones I had seen that geezer wearing during the summer.  The big problem of course was that they were not blue.

It was to be 1965 before I donned my first pair of blue jeans, which again were actually imitation denim and still not the real thing but near enough. During the summers of my teenage years we would envy the holidaymakers from Derry and Belfast sporting their Levis around the streets and coffee bars of Bundoran. They just couldnt be bought in our local outfitters. Some of my contemporaries made excursions to places like Sligo or even Dublin to buy Levis in places like O Connors which still sells jeans today in places like Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. Of course in the 1960s a trip to Dublin was a big thing for a teenager in Ballyshannon.

As years went by I moved to Dublin and was able to buy any amount of jeans and I have watched them grow from being regarded as overalls to becoming an essential fashion item for 99% of the world population. I still love to wear them, as they are comfortable, durable and accepted virtually everywhere one goes. Its a far cry from being sent home from school to put on proper trousers.

 Wireless Days

Growing up in the 1950s in a small Irish town the wireless was possibly the biggest thing in our lives. From morning till night the wireless was on and our lives revolved around programmes like The Kennedys of Castle Ross, Mrs Dales Diary  The IMCO Show and The Waltons Programme. Personalities like Bart Bastible, Harry Thoullier John Sheehan and John Ross were so much part of our lives while characters like Tom Foley of The Foley Family seemed like a real people to us all. I remember as a small child being convinced that all these people actually lived inside the wireless.

We flitted from Radio Eireann to the BBC and Radio Luxemburg at different times and those big old Bush and Pye Radio sets, as they were called, pumped out their lovely sounds for ten or twelve hours a day.  Switching from station to station involved turning the big dial and hearing those twittering sounds as we passed by stations broadcasting in weird and exotic languages. Radio Luxemburg was the most difficult to get and had an infuriating habit of starting to hiss just as your favourite song came on. Some people could get AFN or American Forces Network and heard people like Hank Williams and Carl Perkins as well as blues legends like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker for the first time.

 My mother was a big music fan and she loved programmes like Sing something simple featuring the Mike Sammes Singers, which went out at around 6 o clock on Sunday evenings. She was also a big Black and White Minstrels fan and people like George Mitchell and Jack Parnell became household names. I used to love programmes like the Billy Cotton Band Show and his catchphrase Wakey Wakey! did just that. Im still convinced that listening to those programmes opened up my mind to a wide variety of music and was a huge influence on my later music career.

I will always remember pitting our wits against Joe Linnane on Question Time with his two mark, four mark and really difficult six mark questions and being surprised at how many questions my parents could answer. The School around the corner with Paddy Crosbie was a delight and to listen to the children embarrass their mortified parents as the told their funny incidents was a joy. On the BBC Michael Miles entertained us with Take your Pick and we all urged the contestants to take the money or open the box even though they couldnt hear us.

Sunday afternoons from noon until two were spent listening to the gorgeous voice of Jean Metcalfe as she presented Overseas Requests on the BBC. Her programme catered mostly for British forces overseas in exotic places like Germany and Egypt. Of course the BBC gave us such wonderful programmes as The Goons and the Clitheroe Kid as well as Hancocks Half Hour with the ever-depressed Tony Hancock and his sidekick Sid James.

I can remember hearing commentary on Ronnie Delanys great Olympic win live on Radio Eireann. Of course Sunday afternoons were filled with the unique voice of Michael O Hehir bringing us in word pictures the excitement of GAA matches. He built us mental pictures of our sporting heroes that have remained with us to this day. When the players of the Millennium were being picked by one and all a few years ago I remember querying why this player or that player was being chosen and asking GAA fans from the fifties had they ever actually seen them play. Most hadnt but had heard the great Michael O Hehir describing them and that was enough for them.

 There was a great mystery about the wireless in that you had to imagine so much of the visuals we take for granted on television today. We all remember being enthralled at Christmas as Santa Claus broadcast from the North Pole and being totally convinced that he was really there. Of course there were very few alternative Santas in those days.

 Most people regard the fifties as a fairly depressing era but the wireless lifted that depression for me and I suspect for a lot of people in those days. The personalities and characters of radio in the fifties still live with me all these years later and when I hark back to those radio days it is always with great warmth and joy.