Baby You're a Star (2 page)

He also was handling more money than most of his school friends could dream of.

“We used to get £12 a night, which was fantastic money. And we would get into the gig for nothing. So we were having a great time and actually getting paid, going to the gig and meeting all the bands as well. We used to travel all over Connacht, doing supports, having a great time and I thought Time Machine were building up, getting me ready for the big time.”

The money Time Machine earned was split four ways, earning Louis a tidy sum for his entrepreneurial endeavours. It was a lucrative business, considering his age. In 1967, £3 would buy you a stylish new shirt or a bundle of albums from the record shop in Castlebar.

Louis maintains the money didn’t matter to him. “It was a chance for me to go and see the bands,” he says. “I loved music and the showbands were brilliant.”

The showbands are often ridiculed nowadays but Louis was right. They were brilliant entertainers. They brought pop music to Ireland and contributed to a major national cultural upheaval. Every weekend, people from across the class spectrum would get out on the dance floor to break the monotony of life working on farms or local businesses in rural Ireland. Louis was captivated by the industry, which he saw as dramatic and vibrant.

Before the showbands came to the west of Ireland, popular entertainment for most people hadn’t changed in a century: playing cards, telling stories, and singing traditional songs. The venues where the showbands played may not have been glamourous, but the bands more than made up for this with their talent for sheer rollicking entertainment. Louis saw this ability to entertain as equally important as musical talent.

The showbands were generally made up of six to ten young men, occasionally with a woman “out front”. The band members would dress in matching suits, tailored in the latest style, and all played instruments: the piano, the drums, the bass, the saxophone, the trumpet, or the trombone. Most of the showbands, however, did not play their own music.

“The showbands were judged mainly on their ability to reproduce the hits of the day, to take the top 20 and reproduce it,” explains John Coughlan, the author of a book on the era. “If they could reproduce it almost exactly, they were geniuses. Not many of them showed any great originality.”

Not only did the showbands sing, they also performed comedy routines. The bands toured con-stantly, and played six nights a week, taking only Mondays off. In the mid-sixties, it was estimated that there were 450 ballrooms in Ireland and 600 show-bands travelling up and down the country. Few of these bands ever played to empty halls. The bands would play for up to four hours, with a break in the middle when a smaller relief act would take to the stage and continue to entertain the crowd.

Louis quickly learned about the dynamics of the industry and the business of entertainment. He saw how people would think nothing of driving 50 or 60 miles to see one of their favourite singers perform. He was also enthralled by the showbands. He saw them as bringing excitement, glamour, and most of all, pop music to rural Ireland.

His personal favourite was the Royal Blues Show-band, an ensemble formed in May 1963 in Claremorris, eight miles from his hometown of Kiltimagh. The band’s lead singer was Doc Carroll, who became famous after his band produced a No. 1 hit in the Irish charts in 1966 with
Old Man Trouble
. A year or two later, the Royal Blues provided Louis with his first proper job.

Frank and Vincent Gill were two brothers who played with the Royal Blues. In 1968, the brothers decided to make use of their musical earnings and bought a pub in Claremorris, naming it
The Blues Inn
. The Gill brothers knew the Walsh family and whenever the brothers cycled into Kiltimagh, they would leave their bicycles in the Walsh’s backyard on Chapel Street.

“There were always bicycles there,” says Maureen Walsh, “and they were always taken, and used for going for spins here, there and everywhere.”

When the brothers bought the pub in Claremorris, Maureen Walsh inquired as to whether they could give Louis a summer job. Partly to keep Louis out of mischief for his mother’s sake and partly because they needed a bar boy, the brothers agreed.

Louis didn’t particularly enjoy working in the Blues Inn but he was still riotously happy. He was earning money and organising concerts for Time Machine. He had escaped the spells of anxiety and depression that had affected him in St. Nathy’s. It was perhaps the closest that any youngster in Kiltimagh could come to finding a perfect life.

His love of pop was readily apparent to anyone who knew him. “The other thing I remember about him in the bar was that they used to play country and Irish music, sort of mellow music for the customers, and the minute their backs were turned, Louis would be up and he’d put on some pop, very loud pop,” recalls one regular Blues Inn patron.

As Louis’ passion for pop was readily evident, so was his flair for business. The wages he earned working in the pub were invested into advertising Time Machine. He had a long-term approach to everything. “Any bit of pocket money he got from working in the bar or whatever, he’d use it to buy blank paper and crayons, and spend ages doing up posters for the band, Time Machine,” says one friend.

Through his work in the bar, he also got to know the Royal Blues, and started to do a little work for them too. The band had a secretary who worked out of an office in the village of Claremorris. Louis would join her to help out, taking care of the fan club and answering letters. He was in an exalted position for a teenage boy, because he also got to attend many of the Royal Blues concerts, travelling with Doc Carroll in his car. He soon developed a very good and friendly relationship with Carroll. The people he met during his formative years had an overwhelming influence on the young teenager.

The band’s manager Andy Creighton played a particular role in teaching Louis about show business.

“He was ahead of his time,” recalls Louis. “He would have been an amazing manager if he was around now, and he would be a very good role model to look up to. He was just an aggressive guy who got the Royal Blues to the top of the charts. He just believed and he hyped.”

Louis learned about determination and getting things done by watching Creighton at his work.

“He was like a Colonel Parker. He was one of the great managers that I have known in my lifetime. Not only did he manage the Blues, he also booked their gigs and he looked after them.”

Louis was lucky because he entered show business at the beginning of an era when the music scene was undergoing a metamorphosis in Ireland. There was old-fashioned music and there was pop. Pop music was the teenager’s main preoccupation.

His parents, however, had grave reservations about Louis tagging along with the Royal Blues. “He’d be out all night, and he’d have to go to school in the morning,” says his mother. “That didn’t go down very well in the house! That was it but there was nothing you could do about it only go along with it.

“If he decided he was doing something, he did it and that was it. But actually, he never did give any prob-lems. I’d say there are different sets of problems you’d get with teenagers, but looking back on it there was never any big problem with Louis. He didn’t like drink and he didn’t like smoking.

“They were two things he had an instant dislike for. Long before smoking became unpopular, he wouldn’t allow it.”

Doc Carroll watched Louis turn into an adult. He knew Louis would never become a farmer or settle down in Co. Mayo as would have been expected of him, but would inevitably seek a career in the entertainment industry.

“He loved pop music. He loved show business. You could see it, even then, that Louis was always going to go places,” says Carroll.

According to Carroll, Louis could not hide his admiration for Creighton. He said Louis watched Creighton’s every move. He made it his business to find out more. He had a high degree of curiosity about event management. Louis watched the interaction between the bands, the roadies, the managers and the ballroom owners. He saw the music trade from the inside out. In some instances, he got noticed simply because he was so young and worked hard.

Ronnie McGinn was a promoter who organised entertainment nights in the Municipal Hall in Kinsale, Co. Cork. He remembers seeing a school boy at Royal Blues concerts.

“We used to have the Royal Blues Showband down every two or three months. The thing that struck me about them was the young chap that was with them, which was Louis. I’d say he was still probably going to school. He was the road manager, as such, helping with the gear. I always thought he looked really young,” says McGinn. “It was actually noticeable.”

While Louis learned his trade with the Royal Blues, he was itching to try his hand full-time in the business. Once he completed his schooling, his literal escape from the small-town life of Kiltimagh was inevitable. When he got the opportunity to move to Dublin, he took it.

2

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

Louis had long believed that he could forge a successful career in the music industry, given the chance. His parents frowned on this notion but Louis had inherited his parent’s determination and his resolve would not be shaken. All he had ever wanted was to leave Kiltimagh and follow his dreams. Like all teenagers, he wanted the freedom to live his own life without having to answer to his parents or teachers.

As soon as he had finished school, Louis went to live in Dublin, where he continued working for the Royal Blues Showband. Unfortunately, Doc Carroll left the band not long after, and the Royal Blues started to disintegrate. Having run to Dublin at the earliest opportunity, Louis was about to be jobless in the big city. He had no intention of returning to Kiltimagh so he turned to his mentor, Doc Carroll, for help. Although Carroll wasn’t a big star, he was a great entertainer with a good reputation in the music industry. He was happy to use his influence to help his affable young friend.

Tommy Hayden Enterprises, a Dublin-based artist management firm, had taken over the management of the Royal Blues in 1969. Carroll knew Hayden personally and asked him if he would interview Louis for a job. Hayden was bemused at the notion of a youngster from Co. Mayo wanting a job in show business.

He remembers the conversation vividly. “Doc Carroll said to me, ‘We’ve this young fella down here.’

“I said, ‘Who is he?’

“‘He’s a young groupie that hangs around with us. Everywhere we go, he seems to be there. He’s managing a little band called Time Machine. I thought that maybe you might give him a break,’ said Doc.

“Nine times out of ten, I’d say no, but then out of the blue, he says to me, ‘He’s from Kiltimagh.’

“I didn’t want some smart ass from the city trying to tell me what to do. I eventually met him and I liked his attitude and so forth and I said, ‘Look, start when you want, then.’

“‘What’ll I do?’ he said.

“I said, ‘Well, first of all, we’ll get you to do a bit of publicity here and we’ll get you to make the tea and generally do things about the office’,” Hayden recalls.

“He used to come up to me every night at 6 or 7 o’clock before I’d leave and say hello and say ‘What should I do now?’ So I would just go through all the bits and pieces with him.”

The story of the small-town boy who goes in search of fame and fortune in the big city is an old one, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting when you’re the protagonist. Not only had he succeeded in escaping the straitened atmosphere of small-town life, but he had also secured a job working with his beloved showbands.

Now that Louis had a full-time job with Tommy Hayden, he moved to Dublin permanently. His sister Evelyn invited him to live with her. It was 1970.

“I was living with Mary, my friend from Kiltimagh,” recalls Evelyn “and Louis moved in with us in our grotty little place in Ranelagh.” Louis’ unofficial tenancy in the flat didn’t last long.

“The landlady didn’t want men at all in the place. Louis would start work later than us. One day, she came checking and he was in the bath. He flew into the wardrobe but she was really cute. He had the heater plugged in and he plugged it out but she knew that somebody was after plugging out the heater. So she caught him redhanded, naked in the wardrobe! So we had to move out of that place.”

Meanwhile, a great friendship developed between Louis and his new boss. Louis was like a surrogate son to Hayden while Louis held Hayden in great esteem. Hayden describes his young apprentice as a cons-cientious employee who quickly became schooled in the ways of the music industry. Louis respected Hayden as a self-made man who worked hard and succeeded in this demanding and competitive bus-iness.

Hayden had played the saxophone and clarinet with the Nevada Showband. He eventually became the manager of the Nevada and set up his own company, which mushroomed into one of the most respected artist management firms in Ireland. He was also very pleased with his new employee.

“I liked his demeanour and his whole attitude to life,” says Hayden. “He was just like ‘Yes, yes, yes, whatever you want, yes Sir, no Sir, three bags full, Sir.’ He’d do anything and I just generally liked him and I can honestly say that in all the years we worked together, we never had a row. We might have agreed to disagree on something but we never had a row. It’s a business made up of rows because you have to fight your corner to try and get your fees, and try and do as well as you can for your artist, but I must say we never had a row.”

While the big stars played in rural venues, Dublin was the really happening place, with a greater concentration of stars performing on a more regular basis. Louis loved city life although he had little money and was sleeping on the floor of his sister’s flat. As far as he was concerned, he had stepped onto the first rung of the showbusiness ladder.

“I got to really like Dublin. We didn’t have a lot of money but it was great fun just to be there. Working in Tommy Hayden’s office, you could go to the show-bands every night of the week. You could go out wherever you wanted for free and have a really good time. I used to go to Captain America’s when it opened first. That was one of the great, great spots to go to.”

Louis was firmly dedicated to his job and was certain of his future in the business. His parents were not so sure. Although their son was modestly successful in his new position, they were concerned that the job offered no long-term security. They saw a career in showbusiness as unreliable and transitory and were keenly aware that he was unqualified for any other work. If Tommy Hayden Enterprises were to suffer a decline in fortunes, he would be the first casualty.

“We didn’t know how long it would go on,” remembers Maureen Walsh. “It’s very uncertain work, as you know, and we were thinking of something more nine-to-five. But he really worked hard. No one was going to change his mind.”

His brother Frank believes Louis’ early career caused his parents much anxiety. “My mother was always waiting for him to get a proper job. ‘This lad won’t last and what’s he going to do and all that.’ He just stuck at it. I don’t think there was ever any question in his mind that he would ever do anything else,” says Frank Walsh.

Louis was loving his new life in the city, but he still remained in constant contact with his family at home. He would travel to Kiltimagh whenever he could afford to, taking with him parcels of clothes and gifts for his younger brothers and sister.

“We used to always look forward to him coming down from Dublin,” says Frank. “He always had old clothes, or excess clothes, which were probably out of date in Dublin, but which would have been terribly modern in Kiltimagh. So we thought we were the bees knees although maybe we weren’t. I suppose it was the Irish version of the parcel from America.”

The work in Tommy Hayden’s office was only glamourous by association. Louis was a messenger boy. Hayden had hired him to help his overworked personal assistant, Carol Hanna. Not only was she dealing with the administration of Hayden’s business, she was also helping Connie Lynch, another artist manager, who shared Hayden’s office. Louis was hired to lessen her workload.

“I remember going in and meeting Carol Hanna and I knew she was thinking, “Who is this? What am I going to do with this guy?’” says Louis, “She was like Tommy’s Girl Friday. She did everything.”

Louis answered the telephones, he made the tea, he organised the cleaning and ironing of the bands clothes, and he dealt with fan mail. The work might seem menial, but Louis found it all very exciting. The office was on Hawkins St. in Dublin’s city centre and it was constantly busy.

“It was like a big, big buzz there,” he says. “The phones would be ringing non-stop with promoters around the country, newspapers, fans, everything. It was a real buzz.”

The office was open all hours to accommodate the demands of bands, promoters and the media. Carol worked during the day while Louis took the night shift.

“I finished at half five or six o’clock, Louis would sit there and take over the office from that time until about nine or ten; that’s how he got into the routine of working mainly evenings. During the day, he would come in to me around 2 p.m. and he would do different things that we would need him to do.

“Sometimes he would have to go to London to collect suits for the band, sometimes he’d be doing general things for me and helping me. After 6 p.m. he looked after and managed his own band Time Machine. That was his little bonus for doing a bit of the office work and helping out, he managed his own band then in the evening,” says Carol.

Carol and Louis quickly became firm friends. She was protective of Louis, treating him almost like a little brother, and he looked up to her.

“Louis and myself bonded from the start. I used to look after him, did everything for him, all through the years. Louis and I were like best of friends, best of buddies. We had our hot moments, we had our fiery moments and we’d roar. He’s Cancerian and I’m Leo and there’s a bit of a clash there in our personalities,” she says.

“But Louis and I were like brother and sister. We’d be fighting one minute and the next minute, he would ask me for a cup of coffee. That’s the way it is. We’d be roaring at each other and then he would turn around and say, ‘Make us a cup of coffee there, fish face.’ He’s fire and no patience, no tolerance. He’s absolutely intolerant. He’d just go bananas and suddenly in the next minute then, he’s fine. I do the same, by the way. And we worked like that.”

Louis immersed himself in city life. His favourite nightspot was the Television Club, or the TV Club, on Harcourt Street.

“We used to go to the Television Club on a Monday night. All the bands would be playing there. English bands like Marmalade, the Tremeloes, but the great bands for me were the Freshmen, Chips, the Platter-men, and the Miami. They were brilliant Irish bands,” says Louis.

The Television Club was lively place that attracted everyone of note from the Dublin showbusiness scene. An added bonus for Louis was that he didn’t have to pay admission, as he worked for Tommy Hayden Enterprises. The club was owned by Eamonn Andrews, who would later present
This is Your Life
on UK television, and who was a major Irish celebrity. John Coughlan remembers the venue well: “For a couple of years it was the most successful venue. It also spanned the pure dance hall and the discotheque. We used to run dances there on a Monday night called the ‘Spotlight Night Out’. We’d play all the big bands and visiting international acts. We’d get people like the Everly Brothers there and Roy Orbison – quite big stars. Monday night was a night off for most of the bands and they’d all gather on the balcony to see how their competitors were performing. You’d have Joe Dolan and Brendan Bowyer in to see Dickie Rock performing. It was quite a big social occasion, very glamourous.”

Glamourous, and a world away from the ballrooms of East Mayo. In time, Louis got to know more about the workings of the showband business. Hayden gave him more responsibility and allowed him to book out bands himself. Along with Time Machine, which was still availing of his services, he also booked out a band from Sligo Town called Brotherly Love, an Irish version of the Cassidys.

Louis was more than fortunate in that Hayden was well known and, more importantly, well respected on the entertainment scene. From the beginning, his tenure at Hayden’s company served him well. He learned about the business from the ground up: how to secure concerts for bands; haggle with ballroom owners; outmanoeuvre rival managers, and how to think on his feet. As he honed his negotiation skills, he also developed an intuition for sizing up the people with whom he dealt, and identifying those he could trust and do business with.

Hayden was a skilled promoter and was adept at persuading radio, television, and press journalists to cover his acts. Louis watched and learned and picked up publicity skills that would stand to him in later years; skills that would even gain him a certain notoriety among journalists.

Before Louis ever graduated to booking out bands, Hayden would dispatch him around the newspapers in Dublin to deliver press releases and photographs. All the time he was building up contacts in the media and in related companies.

Once he got a chance to do a little promoting of his own, he seized it with gusto. John Coughlan remem-bers being a frequent recipient of phone calls from Louis, when he was editor of
Spotlight
.

“He was a bit of a pest. A very tenacious, persuasive pest, but very affable. You couldn’t dislike him, really,” says Coughlan. “[He was] persistent, tenacious, persuasive.” Thirty years later, this description is still accurate, though few in the media or music industry would dare to call him a “pest” today.

Louis’ obvious ambition and enthusiasm struck a chord with Hayden. Any uncertainty that Louis had initially displayed faded away. As he settled into his job, his confidence grew.

“He would come in and say ‘Tommy, I’ve got a great idea. What do you think about this?’ I’d say to him, ‘Well, maybe.’

“And then he’d say ‘But, but, but, I don’t mean that’ and he would put it another way to me and then suddenly I would start grabbing the idea.

“He also used to come in to me with songs, playing me songs all the time. I had a band called Red Hurley, Kelly and the Nevada in those days, who were successful on the circuit here. Red had ten No. 1s. He was a household name in about 18 months and Louis used to always come in with new songs. Every second day, he would be in with new songs, saying ‘I’ve got a great song for you.’

“I said to myself, ‘this guy is definitely going places, no doubt about that’. Every second minute I saw him in the early days, when he was supposed to be work-ing, he was reading these music magazines, bringing himself up to date,” recalls Hayden.

The breadth of music on offer in Dublin was a revelation to the young man from Kiltimagh. Louis also attended every concert he could, and often stayed out all night.

“I could never get him out of bed before 5 p.m. in the evening and into the office,” recalls Hayden. “Then he used to tell me, his philosophy on that one was: ‘I can’t get anyone until tea time,’ and then also he said the phones were cheaper after 6 o’clock, so he was saving money.”