Baby You're a Star (3 page)

Louis seized every opportunity provided by his job with Hayden’s company. It was a memorable period in his life, during which he developed his business acumen and built up a network of contacts that any aspiring manager would envy. Between watching famous acts play the TV Club, and cutting deals wherever he could, Louis ingratiated himself with those at the top of the music scene. He was lucky. He found a job he loved and a mentor who knew the trade. He made great friends and important contacts.

He would soon find out, however, that there was a dark side to the bright lights of show business and the social whirl of the big city. As the 1970s progressed, it seemed that his luck was beginning to run out, as the young people of Ireland turned away from the showbands. There were hard times ahead for the young man from Kiltimagh.

The glory days of the Irish showbands did not last. The brilliance of the ballroom era was the product of an extraordinarily rich pool of musical talent drawn from all over Ireland. By the mid 1970s, however, Louis realised that the excitement that had characterised the scene in the sixties was dead and gone. Slowly he came to the conclusion that the showbands were yesterday’s men. They had opened the ears of the young people of Ireland to new music as they whirled around the country but, inevitably, they had fallen out of favour as the new generation of young people were drawn to alternative styles of music: rock and disco.

“The showbands just started disappearing,” says Louis. “Disco came in, nightclubs opened up and the showband scene was just phased out totally. It was a pity because they were all great at the time. Only for the showbands, I don’t know where we’d be now.

“There were great stars in the showbands, people like Red Hurley, Joe Dolan and Dickie Rock. They were all great entertainers. They went out and they sang live every night. They should have been international; they could have been. But they stayed here working the circuit. They were entertainers. It was a great time in Ireland and should not be forgotten.”

The audiences of the 1970s were all too keen to forget. They wanted to hear electric guitars; music inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and the like. Irish bands such as Rory Gallagher and Taste, and Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy sprang up to meet the demand. These bands were rough, mean and edgy, in contrast to the showbands, who were clean-cut, polite and harmonious. And therein lay the appeal of the rock bands. Disco was even more popular and happening, with the emphasis on uninhibited dancing and outrageous clothes.

In the mid 1970s, this was a nightmare for the agents behind the showband scene. Louis, however, under-stood that he had to adapt to the new diversity on the music scene. Although he understood that showbands had provided his wages, his instincts told him that music and musical tastes were about to change. He devoted his time to exploring new venues and learning about all the new types of music on offer.

Jim Aiken, who would later found the event manage-ment firm, Aiken Promotions, recalls being struck by the sheer variety of music, which appealed to the young booking agent.

“Louis and myself crossed paths when Louis was a kid from Mayo,” he says.

“I remember him coming to the shows in the National Stadium. He would have been a teenager, I suppose, very early twenties. He was this guy who loved music, who knew every genre of music. He turned up at rock, he turned up at pop, he turned up at folk, he turned up at Demis Roussos, he turned up at Don MacLean, he turned up at jazz, he turned up at Moving Hearts, Led Zeppelin and Nana Mouskouri. He turned up at everything and he was always doing something in the music business himself.”

Clearly, his interest in music determined the direction in which his career was heading; he was forever analysing the styles of music the public wanted. He immersed himself in various styles of music, although he rarely became a part of the culture that accompanies them. He watched rock bands but was not a rocker. He listened to disco but was not a dancer. He knew far more about popular music and its origins than most DJs. He possessed what industry sources describe as a peculiar ability to understand an audience.

He also assessed acts in terms of their overall enter-tainment value. Many less than extraordinary bands could enthrall an audience with a well-rehearsed play list and some nifty dance moves. He saw their stage presence and ability to entertain as being equally im-portant as their music, in terms of bringing in an appreciative crowd of paying punters.

Louis was one of the few agents who saw the collapse of the showband industry at close quarters, and he learned valuable lessons during this time. He saw singers and musicians squander their earnings on drink and women. He witnessed their marriages breaking up and saw managers defrauding their clients. Many inexperienced musicians were caught up in the heady whirl of the showband era and neglected to keep their feet on the ground and plan for a less lucrative future. Musicians like these were destroyed by the business. Louis watched and took note.

He found working as an agent for Tommy Hayden during this period tiresome, as time and time again, ballroom promoters would attempt to defraud his acts.

Speaking on RTE Radio, he recalled the difficulties of dealing with the promoters. “Slogging around Irish ballrooms. That was the worst thing of my life. I’ve still got baggage from it because, you know why, because some promoters never paid. The promoters around Ireland were the worst. They had four walls and a roof and they treated the artists, the bands, like shit. And if the people didn’t come out, you didn’t get paid.”

Hayden was wise to the demise of the showbands and moved to diversify his business interests, acquiring a number of nightclubs, while continuing to manage and book out bands. More responsibility fell on Louis, who was now a stalwart in the company.

But even if his acts drew large crowds, all of the money was taken at the door of the ballroom. There were no tickets and no accounts, so it was easy to rip off a young band and its young booking agent. If the band didn’t get paid for a gig, he didn’t get his 10 percent booking fee. As the industry went into free fall, some ballroom managers became even more untrust-worthy and desperate. Sometimes some of the bands and their managers tried to rip him off. In the midst of all the wheeler dealing, he discovered the booking agent inevitably came off the worst.

To his credit, Louis was regarded as a professional, who watched out for his bands. He knew when to make demands and when to walk away. He realised an agent had no control unless he could play the game. He understood how important it was to keep the ballroom owners mollified, if his acts were to play in their venues again. Furthermore, well-connected ballroom owners could arrange gigs for the show-bands in Las Vegas and other US cities. These tours usually took place during March and April; months that coincided with the onset of Lent, a time when the local social scene slowed considerably.

Although he was light years ahead in terms of his grasp of music and trends in entertainment, he was still young and relatively inexperienced in his job. Even when no-one was trying to rip him off, the young Louis struggled at times. He was young and relatively inexperienced in his job and spent his days dealing with crafty ballroom owners and promoters who were past masters at emerging on the better end of deals. With time, however, he learned to decipher the body language of deceit and pick up on any hints of skull-duggery. By the time the showband industry was in its final stages of collapse, he had become more than adept at bargaining.

Donal Maguire, who used to book acts from Tommy Hayden Enterprises for the annual Festival of the Carberys in Leap, Co. Cork, recalls that Louis was no fool. “You’d have to bargain with him, of course. If there was a band that wasn’t doing very well, you might have to take them as well as the crowd you really wanted.”

Virtually everyone who worked in the music industry at the time says he was a very reliable person. People still regard him as, perhaps, the most honest agent they ever dealt with during that period. Like all agents, he wanted to earn money, but he understood that it was a three way relationship between the band, booking agent and dance hall owner. He had intuitive knowledge of the workings of the business. He saw it as risky, even foolhardy, to mess people around. For his reliability and personal commitment, he was trusted.

“All his bands would turn up,” says Maguire, in a tone that implied that acts booked with other agents weren’t always such a safe bet. “What you said went. He’d never let you down. The bands would always turn up. I remember we had booked Johnny Logan to do the festival in 1980 and he still showed up in August, even though he had won the Eurovision a few months earlier.”

During the 1970s, Louis continued to book out big name showbands such as Billy Brown and the Fresh-men; a band noted for their ability to perfectly reproduce the sound of the Beach Boys, and Red Hurley and the Nevada. Newer showband-style cabaret acts such as Rob Strong and the Plattermen, and Linda Martin and Chips were also on his books as were, from time to time, rock acts including such luminaries as Thin Lizzy and The Horslips.

By 1976, most of the big name showbands had vanished, splintered and fallen apart. By the end of the decade, they were gone for good. Some of the showbands lead singers, such as Brendan Bowyer, Dickie Rock, and Joe Dolan, adapted their talents to cabaret, and continued to perform.

The entertainment industry in Ireland had changed completely. Louis found the transition difficult. Finding wealth and success proved an even more elusive goal. He secured plenty of work, although he didn’t always get paid for it. From Louis’ point of view, it was just a means to an end. He was making a living and enjoying life to a certain extent but he was no longer immersed in pop music.

All in all, the 1970s were not a good time for Louis Walsh. By the end of the decade, he had no money and was no nearer to finding success in the music business. The daily drudgery of dealing with rock bands had left him disillusioned, but he stuck with it because it was better to be miserable on the inside of the business than to be miserable away from it, and wishing he was still involved. Furthermore, he wasn’t qualified for any other career.

3

WHAT’S ANOTHER YEAR?

When Louis was growing up in Co. Mayo, the showbands were not the only musical phenomenon that interested him. The Eurovision Song Contest also caught his imagination. This annual carnival of pop began in 1956, but it was not until 1965 that Ireland entered the Contest for the first time. Butch Moore, the lead singer of the Capitol Showband, represented his country in Naples per-forming
Walking the Streets in the Rain
, and finished in sixth place.

Luxembourg took the prize that year with Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, a song composed by Serge Gainsbourg. Moore may not have won but his limited success in Naples was treated as an outstanding achievement when he returned to Ireland.

In Kiltimagh, a 12-year-old boy who loved pop music was enthralled by the hysteria surrounding Moore, and became hooked on the Eurovision Song Contest. Louis loved the Eurovision and regarded it as one of the most important nights of the year.

“I used to watch the Eurovision when I was growing up and I remember watching Sandie Shaw and Dana and all these people. When we were in school, it was the big, big show of the year. What a big show!

“It was the biggest music show in the world. Looking back now, it was kitsch and very naff, but there were some great singers in it then. They would just put in the best singer from Ireland, whoever was No. 1, like Dickie Rock or Butch Moore. In England, they had Cliff Richard and Olivia Newton John. It was the best singers and the best songs,” says Louis.

In 1979, the Eurovision was a legitimate musical and business enterprise, and Irish artists regarded it as a great opportunity to boost their careers. Through his work with Tommy Hayden Enterprises, Louis had met many singers and musicians who would do anything to succeed, but few who possessed the capability, talent and stamina worthy of international acclaim. A chance meeting on a bus heading from Dublin City to Co. Kildare was to change all that.

“I met Johnny Logan on a bus going down to Goffs in Co. Kildare,” he recalls. “He was doing ‘Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat’. He told me he was with Jim Hand (another well-known artist manager) and I said ‘I’d love to manage you’.”

Logan’s real name was Seán Sherrard. He was already signed to Hand and had achieved some success in the Irish National Song Contest, the stepping-stone to the Eurovision. Sherrard had been an electrician since he left school, but had also been singing in concerts since the age of 14, influenced by his father, a well-known Irish tenor who performed as Patrick O’Hagan. It was a common occurrence in those days to take a stage name.

Logan had performed his own song
Angie
in the 1979 National Song Contest and came a credible third, but it didn’t help his career much. He continued working as a jobbing singer, travelling around Ireland in his blue Fiat Mirafiore to concerts staged in provincial towns.

When Louis met Logan on the bus, he immediately spotted his potential and acted quickly to initiate a management deal.

Working through Tommy Hayden Enterprises, Louis negotiated a deal with Hand whereby both companies would earn money if anything ever became of Logan’s career. Hand signed a contract with Tommy Hayden Enterprises on 13 March 1979, making Hayden’s company the sole management and promoters for the singer, while Hand would continue to receive his 10 percent for a further two years. Louis was the driving force behind the deal. Hand hadn’t much hope of success for Logan but he knew it would be foolhardy to sign away all potential earnings from the singer to Tommy Hayden.

Under Louis’ guiding hand, Logan’s career blossom-ed for a time, driven by Louis’ belief that Logan was a rare talent.

“I just thought he was young and a great artist, a great middle of the road singer,” says Louis. “I think he was a fantastic singer and a fantastic performer at the time, and he was different to everybody else. Looking back on it, he was streets ahead of anyone who’s around at the moment.”

Louis wasn’t the only good omen to cross Logan’s path. Another unexpected boost came when Logan met Shay Healy, who worked as a press officer with RTE, the national broadcaster. Healy was also a song-writer and one of his compositions was to prove the catalyst that launched Logan’s career into a higher orbit. After the death of Healy’s mother, he had written a song called
What’s Another Year
for his father. On meeting Johnny and hearing him sing, he thought his song would suit Logan’s style perfectly.

The song itself had been rejected for entry into the Castlebar International Song Contest that year, but Healy had faith in it, and persuaded Logan to sing it in the following year’s National Song Contest. Louis was happy for Johnny to have a go at the Eurovision but he didn’t like Healy’s song.

“He gave us this song called
What’s Another Year
. I heard it. I said it was awful,” he says. “I did think it was awful, but I said: ‘It’s a TV show. Let’s do it. It’s going to be promotion.’

“That’s the way I looked at things at the time. Shay Healy got Bill Whelan to do an amazing arrangement, he put a sax on it, and
What’s Another Year
just walked the Song Contest. Johnny, overnight, was hot.”

Whelan’s involvement had proved crucial. He re-arranged the song, adding a saxophone introduction, which lifted it and immediately caught the listeners attention.

At the 1980 National Song Contest, held in the studios of RTE and hosted by DJ Larry Gogan, the result was never in doubt. Logan won the competition with 40 points; 19 points clear of his nearest rival. Louis was still unschooled in international band management but he had brought Logan’s career this far, with the backing of Tommy Hayden.

Louis made the arrangements to travel to The Hague where the 1980 Eurovision was due to take place. Although participation in the event was enormously exciting for Louis, he was unable to generate any serious media coverage. Ireland hadn’t won the Contest since 1970, and few people in the music industry seemed that sure of Logan’s chances.

On the day of the Contest, the
Irish Times
didn’t cover Logan’s participation in the Eurovision. The
Irish Independent
didn’t mention Logan either, although Kate Robbins, a member of Prima Donna, the English entry, did get a few paragraphs as she was confined to bed suffering from “a high temperature and exhaustion”, and was unlikely to perform in the Contest. The
Irish Press
did report on Logan’s chances, saying
What’s Another Year
had emerged as a strong favourite to win the Contest, after the previous night’s dress rehearsal. This information, however, was supplementary to the big Eurovision story; that the Dutch Tulip Growers Association had decided to name a new tulip after the singer of the winning entry.

Louis and the rest of Logan’s entourage ran wild in The Hague. Their hotel became the social headquarters for those competing in the Eurovision. The Irish contingent threw wild and extravagant parties every night in the week leading up to the Contest.

“I was there with Tommy Hayden, Johnny Logan, Jim Hand, Thelma Mansfield and Pat Kenny. I remember Pat cycling around the foyer of the hotel on a bike. He was great fun and he was just into the whole thing and we had the best fun ever,” Louis recalls.

Louis, in typical fashion, kept a beady eye on the competition during rehearsals and took comfort from any mishap that befell Logan’s rivals. Both Louis and Healy were particularly worried about the Italian entry, Alan Sorrenti. As luck would have it, Sorrenti had an enormous row with his wife. “She was threatening to throw herself from the hotel window, and we thought ‘Well, that’s him disconcerted’,” says Shay Healy.

Louis may have been worried about Logan’s rivals, but he tried not to show it. He knew Logan needed all the support and protection in the run-up to the Contest.

Healy took a more direct approach. For the entire week before the Contest, he wore a sweatshirt with the words: “It is imperative that I win this contest” printed on the back.

On Saturday, 19 April 1980, Logan finally took to the stage in the 25th Eurovision Song Contest. Louis was confident; Hayden was confident and Jim Hand was about to realise he’d made a serious error of judgment. There were hundreds of people in the audience at the Congresgebouw that night and 500 million more watching the event live on television. Twenty-four-year-old Logan wasn’t fazed, however, and performed with his heart.

Some singers chose to underplay emotions but Logan gave the performance his all. Juries all over Europe were touched at the sight of this boyishly handsome singer and his heartfelt song of woe.

As the close of the voting drew near, six countries had given Ireland top marks. Belgium had the deciding vote, and duly awarded their 12 points to Ireland. Logan won with 143 points, beating German entrant Katja Ebstein into second place by five points. At that precise moment, Logan made the transition from little-known local singer to global star.

Louis and Hayden felt the commercial reverber-ations of the win within minutes.

“Jim Hand wanted to manage him overnight. He suddenly was his best friend, even though he didn’t want to know him before. He was there because legally he had Johnny under contract. He didn’t care about him. He was a liability to him. Jim was a brilliant manager but he had let Johnny go,” says Louis.

Louis was now handling an internationally suc-cessful artist. Logan’s win was the beginning of a whirlwind of celebrity. His triumph was reported on the front pages of the Sunday and Monday news-papers around the globe, under headlines such as “What another win” and “Johnny Logan, King of Europe”.

Louis was determined to use the publicity to his advantage. A rousing welcome was organised for Logan at Dublin Airport, with journalists, politicians and Aer Lingus dignitaries jostling for position on the tarmac. From the moment Logan stepped off the plane at Dublin airport, wearing white leather trousers and a black leather coat, it was clear that Logan’s career had taken an immeasurable turn for the better. There were thousands of well-wishers and fans thronging the airport balconies. “When Johnny went to walk amongst them, he was totally mobbed. At one point, it even seemed mildly dangerous for him,” remembers Shay Healy.

Louis stood on the sidelines with Healy and Hayden while Logan embraced his success. Louis likened the reception to Beatlemania, as he pondered how Jim Hand would react to letting such an obviously talented singer go.

Incidentally, the new Eurovision winner arrived home carrying a bunch of Johnny tulips. The Dutch Tulip Growers Association had made good on their promise.

Probably the only people not overcome by delight at Logan’s Eurovision win were the organisers of the Castlebar International Song Contest, who were castigated in the newspapers for committing the “boob of a lifetime” by failing to select the song for their competition in the previous year. The contest director, David Flood, admitted to the
Irish Press
, “It was a blunder. I am sure we will hear a lot about it.”

In the weeks that followed, Logan enjoyed glamour in spades. Before the win, Louis had booked him to perform at nine concerts in the 12 days following the contest, aware that life had to go on after the week of fun in The Hague. Once Logan won, however, these gigs were swiftly cancelled and Louis arranged a European tour. In the following 12 days, Logan visited Switzerland, the UK, France, Germany, the Nether-lands, and Belgium, playing to packed venues.

Tommy Hayden Enterprises acted swiftly to capitalise on the win, and garner as much media cover-age as possible. Louis was instrumental in planting stories in the national media about Logan, who embraced his newfound fame. On the Wednesday after the contest, he spent £522 on new clothes in London. That same night, he recorded a piece for
Top of the Pops
, where Legs & Co, the show’s dancers, presented the young singer with a giant birthday cake. The producers placed him in the final slot before the No. 1 single, indicating their belief that
What’s Another Year
would soon reach No. 1. Louis was in the studio too, keeping in the background and soaking up the atmosphere. For him,
Top of the Pops
was the pinnacle of pop. It was his first taste of international success, and an amazing break from the grind of booking out small-time acts back home.

Top of the Pops
wasn’t the only high profile television show where Logan appeared. On the Friday night, he appeared on the
Late Late Show
, where he was presented with a new Talbot Salara, a car that wasn’t even on the market yet. The following night, he appeared on British television again, appearing on the
Val Doonican Show
. Princess Beatrix of Holland contacted Tommy Hayden Enterprises the next week asking if it was possible for Logan to sing at her coronation ball. Logan duly obliged, saying: “Who am I to refuse a Queen?”.

Tommy Hayden and Louis watched Logan carefully. He was fast turning into an international star. His single surpassed all of their expectations.
What’s Another Year
sold half a million copies within three days of its release, catapulting Logan to No. 1 in 11 European countries, including Ireland and the UK.

Logan was the first male Irish singer ever to reach No. 1 in the UK singles chart, and
What’s Another Year
was the first Eurovision-winning UK No. 1 since Waterloo in 1974. The song stayed at No. 1 in the UK for two weeks and ultimately sold 3 million copies.

Rapid success can be controlled, but other people’s reactions to it are sometimes difficult to handle. While Logan was achieving stardom and popular acclaim beyond his wildest dreams, he was at the centre of a contractual crisis. He was entangled with two managers and five record companies.

Jim Hand had negotiated a recording contract with an Irish company called Release Records in 1975. In almost five years, Release Records released only one of his singles in France, and two or three in Ireland. None of these had performed well. Furthermore, Logan claimed Hand had paid him much less than the £100 per week he was supposed to receive. He said Hand had told him to “go get a job in Dunnes [the Irish supermarket chain]”.