|
Declan MacManus pulled into a garage somewhere west of Athlone and told the attendant to fill his tank while he browsed among the dusty tape collection of Best of Daniel O'Donnell's and Brendan Bowyer's Greatest Hits.
One tape caught his eye — an obscure collection of songs by Count John McCormack, the Irish tenor. Among them was a song called "Mighty Like A Rose." Intrigued by the title, he bought the tape.
One year later, having completed most of the work on his next album, singer songwriter Elvis Costello, a.k.a. Declan MacManus, decided to name his new album Mighty Like a Rose. A friend in New York, hearing the title, said it was the same as a doo-wop song sung by a '50s group called The Carols.
MacManus couldn't believe it — that a Mother Machree style song once sung by the great Count John McCormack could also be on a record by a black American group. When the friend sent him a tape of the doo-wop version he was astounded.
"That's folk music. It doesn't always have to be something played on traditional instruments. It's part of the transfer process," he says.
Declan MacManus or Elvis Costello as he is better known, uses the story to illustrate his point about Bringing it All Back Home, the one million pound, five episode joint RTE and BBC production about the journey of Irish music through the years and across oceans and the influence it has had on a wide variety of contemporary musical forms.
The first instalment hits Irish TV screens on Sunday night, the result of a three-year musical odyssey for producers Phillip King and Nuala O'Connor of Hummingbird Productions, the independent Irish production company who sold their idea to RTE and BBC Northern Ireland.
The usually reticent MacManus is eager to talk about Bringing it All Back Home, offering his services voluntarily to King, anxious to help the show with whatever publicity is needed to have the show watched and noticed.
"I'm just sort of saying I'm in the programme, I'm really proud to be in it. I think it's a really good story and I'm really glad they got to do it... the main thing about it is it's a really good story, a good read to be told on TV with pictures and music. I can think of a lot worse ways for RTE and BBC to spend their money."
He, like many of the musicians who have taken part in Bringing It All Back Home, jumped at the chance of taking part in the series. They include assorted members of U2, Hothouse Flowers, Clannad, An Emotional Fish, The Waterboys, Christy Moore, The Pogues, The Everly Brothers, Pete Seeger, Ricky Skaggs, The Clancy Brothers, Mary Coughlan, Mary Black and Dolores Keane, as well as a bewildering host of lesser known traditional musicians and folk singers.
Part of the attraction was their belief in the premise of the story — a story about the music of a people and the journeys it took, the friends it made and the influence it has had on folk and rock music.
The programme was being made by musicians — Philip King is a well-known singer with Scullion with an academic fascination with musical arcana, Musical director Dónal Lunny is a widely respected musician and composer whose influence on Irish music has been enormous since his days with Sweeney's Men in the 60s, Planxty, The Bothy Band in the '70s and Moving Hearts in the 80s. Dónal had also worked closely with Elvis Costello when he recorded tracks for his last album, Spike, the Beloved Entertainer in Ireland.
But King and director Peter Carr, a renowned documentary filmmaker, went even further than collecting "talking heads." Instead they set out to illustrate the truth of their discoveries by matching singers and musicians from widely varying disciplines, nationalities and styles and allowing them to illustrate their theory by playing together.
So U2's The Edge plays with former Moving Heart Dónal Lunny, Don and Phil Everly jam with uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn, Emmylou Harris sings with Dolores Keane and Mary Black, and Kentuckian country star Ricky Skaggs trades tunes with Irish fiddler, Paddy Glackin.
And Mary Coughlan duets with Elvis Costello on "Mischievous Ghost." "There was a case for the story that is told in 'Mischievous Ghost' in such a broad story as Philip and Peter were trying to tell. I think it's a comical idea because I used a 'we' a bit loosely, but I would say it's not unique to Irish culture that there is this romanticisation of the dissolute poet and this idea that he might inconveniently die peacefully and belie the legend, it just seemed appropriate to the whole notion, and then the musical idea of putting the pipes over the written piece, that was my little musical comment."
In his effort to find where he fitted into the notion of Bringing It All Back Home MacManus considered his own musical influences although not in the contemporary fashion for "finding one's roots," he added hastily.
" 'Mischievous Ghost' illustrates this diversity of interests and in itself tells its own complex tale — I had done a sketch of what I wanted, the chords the string section would play and then putting the storyline over it and then asking Mary Coughlan to sing it because I figured her voice would tell the story better than me yelling my head off and then have Davy Spillane to add the wild element, the improvised element that's in the traditional Irish music."
"Mischievous Ghost" wasn't his first venture in the composition of a folk ballad with a distinctly Irish theme and flavour. On Costello's last album, Spike: the Beloved Entertainer, some of which was recorded in Dublin using a host of Irish musicians, including Dónal Lunny, he recorded "Last Boat Leaving," a song about a British Squaddie, his grandfather, who has been called up to go and quell a rebellion in Ireland but his wife warns him not to go and saying he has done his bit, leave this one alone.
"That's a sombre song and as far as I know it is a true story or at least it's based on true experiences the way they were told to me... if that isn't folk music I don't know what is...
| 
