Sean Brady's journey with Irish music and song

'Pack up your troubles on your old kitbag and smile, smile, smile'

While my Dad was knee high to a leprechaun in Neutral Ireland during WW2, my Mum was growing up in war torn England. She was born in London with some Irish background through her Grandad who originated from Dublin. During the blitz my Mum and her Sister (my Auntie Fay) were evacuated along with tens of thousands of other kids to the countryside to escape the best efforts of the Luftwaffe. She spent the rest of the war in Devon on a farm and afterwards in Maidenhead, Berkshire. My Mums Dad, was known as 'The Duke' and was well known around South London as bit of a lad. His participation in WW2 was shall we say, 'Legendary'. I met him as a kid and he took me under his wing to try and toughen me up a bit for the streets of Battersea where in those days it was no place for a wimp! He took me to boxing lessons in Walter St Johns School and there I learned just a tad about the noble art of pugilism. I'm afraid it didn't last long. As I progressed the hidings I got in the ring somewhat killed my interest and I gave it up and went back to being a full time wimp. A little more able to take care of myself perhaps but I was never going to be the next Henry Cooper!  It's often heard said from people that their Mum is 'The Best in the world' and maybe that's an overegged expression for some. However, in my case I believe that I have been truly gifted to have had such a fantastic Mother who has been there for me through hell and high water over the years. Like all creatures on this planet I've had my moments in life where things didn't go quite the way I'd hoped they might, but my Mum has always been around to help me pick up the pieces and start again. We are as close today as we ever were and I simply love her to bits. My Dad is not with us anymore and there's a long story there, but, in spite of the chequered and often difficult history between us, I miss him at times and have many, many fond memories of him, especially from early childhood. He was, shall we say, quite a character and there'll never be another one like him. My aunt Fay married a GI who's name ironically was Joe! They have lived in New York for many years and I've visited them many times. For some time in my life I found the blend of identities to be somewhat of a 'crisis'. But now, older and wiser it's really quite a gift to be able to draw upon two such powerful traditions. Yes, of course my Irishness reigns supreme with me by a long chalk but I'm really pretty comfy nowadays with being a 'London Irishman'. I was born and raised in London of Irish descent so the cap fits perfectly! Besides, there are more important things, like Millwall avoiding relegation this season!

'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!' (Samuel Johnson)

This is my Dad and my little self in 1962. (Yes the legs are still somewhat reminiscent of  a couple of Twiglets). My Mum, Dad, Sister (Paulette's in the picture below left)  and I used to go camping to Littlecommon in Sussex and they were special and exciting times indeed. 'Are we nearly there', 'I can see the sea' are phrases that come to mind from the journey down the A21 many moons ago. The thrill of cooking bangers and beans with a parrafin cooker and reading the Beano in our tent courtesy of a hurricane lamp, pulling the penny one armed bandits on Hastings pier, sticks of rock, etc, were yesterdays equivalent of playing with Gameboys and Wiwis. Poor kids of today don't know what they're missing! I went to my first school in my hometown of Battersea. It began with Sacred Heart infants, then juniors, in Trott Street. Lots of bitter and twisted Nuns, thuggish Priests and everybody seemed to be of either Irish, Italian or Spanish background because we were all Catholics. I didn't like school much, in fact I hated it. I did altar boy stuff as often as possible to get out of as many lessons as I could. Reading and writing were my strong points but little else. I loved my parents both equally at this time and my Dad was still someone whom I admired and looked up to. My sense of Irishness was a source of great comfort to me and gave me a sense of belonging that fitted like a glove. It was to become a lifelong obsession. My Dad filled my sister and I up with all the blarney about Leprechauns and legendary tales of his childhood building my Grandfather up into an iconic hero of the Irish 'troubles' of the 1920's. I had him down as a legend long before I first met him. My  wonderful and unforgettable Granny, Lily, had visited us from Adare a couple of times and she was just too special for words. My Dad introduced me to Irish and Country music. Our radiogram was always stuffed with LPs from the likes of Hank Snow, Hank Locklin, Hank Williams, The Dubliners, Irish Rebel songs, Big Tom and the Mainliners, Larry Cunningham, etc. My Aunt Theresa, who also lived in Battersea, loved all of that stuff too, was by far my favourite Aunt and was always very good and kind to me. I loved the songs and music and of course still do. I always had a real delight in hearing anything by Patsy Cline, or Jim Reeves. My Dad was into all the sad songs and I was weaned on the stuff. Gratuitous and maudlin sentimentality was a virtue at this time. I Loved to record the songs on an old Grundig tape recorder and then painstakingly write down the words and learn them off by heart. 'My Old Fenian Gun', 'Shall my soul pass through old Ireland' and Kevin Barry' stirred my emotions and got me interested in Irish history big time. In 1966 I got expelled from Sacred Heart and the only school that would take me was a shithole in Chelsea called St Josephs. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire! I loathed the place. The Head was a big savage, his hands were like shovels with sausages sticking out of them who whacked me with them many times, often for such henious crimes (oh! shock and horror!) as being late for school! I never fitted in, I got bullied a lot and it was a miserable time. Aged 11 I began my secondary education at St Thomas Moore's next door. More doom and gloom there but got on with it as best I could. I should point out here that as a kid I was a miserable little sod and well earned my nickname of 'Wingebag'. I made some good mates at 'Tommy Moore's' though and some of us are still pals today. I went to Ireland for the first time in 1969 on holidays to Adare with my Dad, Mum and Sister. That visit and those which followed were some of the few things in my life that exceeded my expectations my miles. I did my first 'gigs' in 1969 and 1970 when my Dad and my Uncles would take me to ballad sessions around Limerick which were all the rage at the time. I loved it beyond words. I was the talk of the town and everyone wanted to know who this little cockney kid was who knew all the Rebel songs! Big Tom and Larry Cunningham were big names at this time and 'Gentle Mother' and 'Lovely Leitrim' were amongst the most played at parties in the McCarthy home of which there were many! Booze was already an integral part of my life. It seemed to give me big fluffy wings to fly. Booze destroyed my sense of awkwardness and shyness. This magical potion made feel seven feet tall and bullet proof. One day the sky would disappear. Oh and yes, I think Samuel Johnson had a point but he was of course referring to someone else in a different context, (pleaded Sean). I believe that having a healthy love and sense of belonging to something special like Irish music, culture and history is mainly a force for good. (Sez Sean)

'As I was slowly passing an orphans home one day, I stopped there for a moment, just to watch the children play'

I started to get up and sing in our local Battersea Labour Club with the bands around 1971 and my major turn was 'Nobodys Child', a real depressing song about a blind kid in an orphanage who nobody gave a shit about. I learned it from a single out at the time by the Alexander Brothers. God forgive me but I still sing it at gigs sometimes. I had an audition for a very popular TV show at the time called 'Junior Showtime' and was auditioned by the late Jess Yates. As I recall he was a tad gruff and would have given Simon Cowell a good run for his money with his directness. My dear old Uncle Horace, a pianist had transposed the music sheet into a much lower key for me, but Jess refused to play it in that key and I almost blew my testicles off trying to sing it in the originally written key. That was the beginning and end of my then TV career! (Sob, sob) until I did some freelance presenting on the QVC shopping channel a few years back. In 1973 at the age of 16 I got my first guitar. It was a £12 Spanish guitar that I learned a few chords on, bought a capo and away I went. My playing standard hasn't really improved that much since. I graduated to a Yammy a few months later (that I still have and use) and practised until I got enough of a handle on it to bluff my way through a lot of songs. I got into my first band in 1975. We were called Stage 3 and later Stage 4. Wow, I had arrived! We played in Irish pubs and clubs around south London and in those days there seemed to be one on every corner. I got married in 1977 and to supplement my income I played pretty much every weekend thereon and I've been doing it ever since. I also started dabbling with songwriting at this time. I never lost my love for singing and lived for the weekends when I could not only do something that I adored doing but got paid a few quid for it too!

'Maggie Thatcher you can't match her, she's the darling of us all'

I'd been writing songs for a while by now and singing the odd one here and there (yes, some of them were VERY odd) at gigs. At first I was reluctant to tell anyone in the crowd at the gig that 'This is one of mine' (cringe) but this was a good way at trying them out. My logic was yes, it's super duper if your Mum, Dad and Uncle think your songs are great, why wouldn't they! The REAL test is Joe Public. So, now and then people would ask about some of the songs, 'Who wrote that one? Who sings that one?' 'Wow, what a load of shit that song was!'. I decided to do a few cheapo demos of my songs and eventually got a few quid together and recorded some of them. My first single was a complete and utter bummer. In fact, I ended up using lots of the 7" vinyl singles as frisbees on Clapham Common. Unfortunately nobody wanted to buy them for the simple reason that the recording quality and probably the songs were crap. I never stopped believing that I could write and gave it another go a year later. I'd written a really (what I thought!) silly song about Maggie Thatcher, PM at the time, that poked a bit of fun at her and had some (as considered at the time) irreverent lyrics. Somehow it touched a chord with people and I decided to put it out on a single. The cost of recording it was £100 for both the a and b side. It was recorded in a blokes front room in South London with myself on guitar, Kevin McDermott a box player and absolute gent from Wexford, with the drums and bass done on a keyboard synthesiser. The journey thereon was truly life changing. It sold by the thousands all over the UK and became an underground hit. It Never got any radio play as did none of my follow up singles but they also sold by the bucketload. I got a (shall we say) little shellshocked by some of the people I dealt with and trusted in the early days of it's success but thankfully they were somewhat short sighted on how far we could take it. I met up with an old schoolmate, Stephen O'Brien who was working in Ozzie Osbourne's studio in the West end of London and we formed our own label, 'Crubeen Records'. I wrote lots of songs for it (many were written in the pub after recording sessions) and on the back of two successful singles we did the album. It was a phenomenal success and sold mega amounts in the UK and shortly after took off in Ireland. It would take a book to spill the beans on all of the things that changed in my life after that, but suffice to say that it took me to lots of interesting places, people and things, becoming one of the most exciting, funpacked times of my life. Maggie (God love her) stayed in power for many years after and the album just kept on selling. I had a string of several more follow up singles out (see my discography for full details) all around the same kind of thing, namely, taking the piss out of holy cow politicians and praising Ken Livingstone, etc. (A great pal of the Irish at this time)  I had a great run with this genre of writing but towards the end of the eighties political satire and poking fun at our political icons got a bit old and tired. It was time to change track with my writing. Throughout the eighties I toured a lot all around the UK and the east coast of the USA and it was great fun.

"We're on our way with Jackie's army, we're on our way to victory"

This decade was my best ever as a songwriter and along with a couple of more successful albums of my own I got some major cover versions released. 'You're Never Too Old To love' was released by FOSTER AND ALLEN on one of their albums and enjoyed extensive BBC airplay. As well as this, the album soared high into the British charts and was very lucrative for me. Later, Susan McCann released a single version of the song which I rewrote especially for her. It was produced by one of Ireland's finest producers, LIAM HURLEY, who did a superb job on it. It was a hit and got BBC radio 2 playlisting. Both versions are still around and have been re-released constantly on various compilation albums with many different labels all over the world including the READERS DIGEST. I also got a another great cover version recorded by one of my favourite Irish acts, THE FUREYS. They did a really nice job on my 'De Valera' song on their 'Winds of Change' album. My JACKIES ARMY Irish world cup song was a great seller and got played on Channel 4 television. It got used on a world cup video and as a backing track for a computer game! In the mid 90's my pulling power was slipping and my ability to put lots of bums on seats on tour was fading fast. The heydays of the live Irish music scene in England were gone. I enjoyed the ride but it was time to assess and change with the tide. Luckily, like manna from heaven, the Irish theme bar bonanza began. It was around 1995 when all of a sudden O'Neill's, Scruffy Murphy's and a million other names started sprouting on what seemed every corner. Whoopee! It was Irish music revival time and the next few years were a ball. It also gave me the idea to start 'Brady's Irish Music Agency' and indeed kick started the project. Here we are over a decade later still up and running. In this decade I got together with my old playing mate Archie McPherson and along with Prism Leisure we released the highly popular and mega selling 'Shamrock & Thistle' albums. They were very low budget affairs but they sold like hotcakes and we had a lot of fun recording them. So, all in all the 1990's were good!

'Now the Jewel of the village is gone, far away, full of shame, all alone. Banished by the ones who claimed to love her, forsaken by the holy ones who preach with hearts of stone'

The Irish theme bar phenomenon was still going strong in the early years of the first decade of the new millennium, but the writing was on the wall. The powers that be were re-branding the bars all over the UK and changing the music format. My 'Brady's Irish Music Agency' along with my own gig circuit had enjoyed some fabulous boom years and luckily I had the foresight to gear my business affairs in other fields too. So, when the smelly stuff finally hit the fan we were still doing ok. I launched my covers album in 2002 entitled, 'Best Irish Pub Songs'. It's done well and continues to do so, but good as that is and grateful as I am, I like putting out my own songs so I kept writing stuff and I eventually got together with a musical genius, Kieran Kiely, who produced my latest album, 'Jewel of the Village'. I wanted to put out an album of my songs that covered different genres of my writing and I've been pitching the songs, right, left and centre from Dublin to Nashville over the past year, so fingers crossed we'll get a cover or two released in time. Meanwhile I'm getting releases regularly of compilation albums featuring my stuff, the latest of which is a Susan McCann DVD and CD album including. 'You're Never Too Old To Love'. 2007 was another rewarding year for radio plays with several BBC spins of my old stuff from the 1980's as well as a few blasts from my new album. I got word a few weeks ago that my Falkland's War song 'The Battle of Goose Green' from my new album, is being used in a forthcoming film about the conflict. I know little about the film but I'll put some info on my 'news-gigs' page once I hear more. If you'd like to hear it take a trip to my shop on here where you'll find a sampler of the track. You can also download the full version for FREE via my other site (Sean Patrick McCarthy) that I use to showcase my new compositions. Ah well, It's 2008 and over thirty years since my first live gig. Here's to the next 30!