GROWING UP
Dad got his own ‘old time’ band together, called the Round Tower Ceilidhe Band, which got shortened to the Round Tower. They were more of a dance band, with piano and a saxophone. I grew up as a child with my Mum in the house and her girlfriends, who were good fun. In the evenings, my Dad would be off with the band, and he and the musicians would come back after gigs. It was exciting and fun. We were the third family in the town to have a TV, and all my mates came back to the house to watch kids’ programmes – sports and things like ‘Boy Meets Girls’ and ‘Six-Five Special’ with its house band Don Lang and the Frantic Five. Suddenly you were exposed to all this rock’n’roll stuff. You weren’t just hearing it on Radio Luxembourg – you were actually seeing these guys: Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Joe Brown. I used to think Joe was God, and Adam Faith had an amazing persona. I didn’t look at the drummers. With Adam, you felt that he was human, whereas Billy Fury was sort of raw and superhuman. Elvis was so exotic that he just didn’t register with me. My mother was a huge Buddy Holly fan, and his songs are the only ones I can remember her singing. She had four brothers, one of whom was Noel Ginnity, an Irish comedian who, in the ’60s, was part of the Irish ballad boom. He was a member of the Ramblers Three, with Johnny McEvoy and Mick Bonner. They toured with The Dubliners, part of that gang. Luke Kelly was best man at his wedding. Oddly enough, it was Noel who introduced me to what I would have considered hardcore traditional music at that point. I was hearing the Chieftains and Seán Ó Riada’s music through Noel. I spent a lot of time in hospital as a kid. I was in the sanitarium for six months and in another hospital for three months. I had severe bronchiectasis; it was a neardeath business back in 1956. Even then, you had hospital radio, so you’re hearing everything that’s going on, like Lonnie Donegan and other skiffle bands. I tapped along
From top: Eamon Carr, schoolboy and dog lover; a school play cast photo with Carr (back row, left) and future band colleague John Olohan (front row, far right); Toneage live in 1966.
to those sort of things, so I thought that once I got out 27