Archive Interview: Big Tom graced the Hot Press Cover in 1983

The Prologue:
I said, self you’ll ruin your health / They say alcohol cooks the brain, I answered me, ‘that well may be, but you know, it sure works good to kill the pain’. T. Glazer.

The boys were swilling down beer like nobody’s business. What’s more, they looked like they had been doing so for some considerable time, and would continue to do so for as long as they were let. Tommy joe was way ahead, placing regular supplementary orders for pints and half ones, as he waiting for the others to catch up. But then he had a lot more belly to fill. The conversion related mainly to matters of an equine nature. There was much talk of ‘’mares’’ and ‘’riding’’. Occasionally, specific mention would be made of a particular ‘’filly’’, with whom one or other of the company wouldn’t mind going for a ‘’canter’’. All very esoteric.
Mattie was all for singing. ‘I’ll always be a drifter/But I’ll be driftin’ back/ To where I left you cryin’/ In the smoke along the track’ he would go, and Eddie the bus-driver from Galway would fill in the instrumental-breaks on his phantom guitar: “”dhigga-dhigga-dhigga-dhigg, dhigga-dhigga-dhigga-dhink, dhigga-dhigg-dhigg-dhigg, dhigga-dhigga-dhink-dink” - like so. Tommy Joe would shout encouragement, i between slugs of beer. “Give ‘er waskee! Give ‘er pep!”
It was saturday night in Glenamaddy, and the boys were going good-o.
Mattie doesn’t so much talk, as converse in lines from Big Tom songs. “Dim lights, thick smoke, and loud loud music”, is all he’ll answer to a simple enquiry about his sex-life. He’s a hard man to elicit biographical information from. When pressed, he tends to burst evasively into song, “Shall I ne’er see you more, Gentle Mother, In the fields where the wild flowers grow?” and so forth. After each outburst, he’ll enquire “isn’t that it?”
Under intensive interrogation, during which he performs the entire Big Tom back-catalogue, it emerges that he is single, thirty-eight and lives on his own twenty-acre farm about five miles away on the on the Galway side of “Glen”. He survives on a combination of the Farmer’s Dole and the rewards of the occasional few months work in England, driving diggers. It was on one such excursion, in 1970, or so, that he first came across. “The King” playing in the ballroom in Manchester.
Mattie always refers to Big Tom as “the King”. He attends every Big Tom gig within a thirty mile radius, when he’s at home,and studies “the King” intently from the dancefloor. Tonight, he’s going down to the Sound of Music Club, just as soon as the pub’s shut.
When asked about his own mother, Mattie’s face becomes forlorn. His mother is dead. You sympathise and ask him when she died. “Nineteen sixty-nine” is the reply the precedes the inevitable burst of song” “By the side of a clear crysteel founting, there stands a lonely churchyard, closely by”... And so it goes.

The Analysis:
In Glenaldy, there is only one King.-The High King. Big Tom. When l first went "dancing" there ten years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to put your hands in your pockets once you went inside the front door of the Sound Of Music, never mind dance.
Dance's then, were great, teeming swaying, crushing, sweaty, pushing organisms of humanity, which made a sardine-tin seem positively underpopulated. If you had the misfortune to go in with your hands in your pockets, you’d be hard put to take them out again!

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These days more often than not, you’d have an altogether different reason for keeping your hands in your pockets. Like keeping them warm.
Within the past few years, over half the dancehalls in the country have come in for the padlock treatment. Even the top promoters like Sound Of Music owner Joe O'Neill, have begun to feel the pinch.
A fortnight without either Joe Dolan Bagatelle, The Champions or Big Tom, and the attendance in even the most established halls starts to dwindle.
Big Tom is top of the shoband first-division, and looks like staying there for a long time. But the rest of the league is rapidly disappearing from under him. Some people blame the promoters - for bleeding the 'punters' dry, and failing to put anything back , in terms of value for money. Some people blame the bands, for being plain bad. Some people blame the discos, the "singing" lounges, the recession and Gay Byrne (Some people blam Gay Byrne for everything).
Me, I’m an overworked scribbler. I just don’t know.
But my buddy, Cryptic Jim, now he’s the sociologist.
"While it’s true", Jim says, "that the slump in the ballrooms is partly attributable to all of these factors, the underlying causes go deeper. Ballrooms, y'see existed in the cultural vacuum that was Ireland before the onslaught of the mass-communications revolution. The discos, for instance, were one of the by-products of the revolution, and their arrival in rural-Ireland certainly served to highlight the sheer mediocrity and bad value being served up by bands and promoters.
"But the on going demise of the showband era is more significant than is generally believed. It is, in fact, just one symptom of the process of cultural homogenization which is currently happening in this country."
Fine, but how has Big Tom heid his own, against the full brunt of the mass-communications revolution?
"Simple. He was original. He wasn't imitating anyone or re-hashing someone else’s product, as the other showbands were. So he wasn't quite so open to unfavourable comparisons once the cultural windows were opened up."
"Also,he was in the right place at the right time. He stepped into the vacuum which had been created by the commandeering of rural Ireland's indigenous folk-music by the prim-faced, fainne-wearing, sensible-shoed culture­-vultures. He put his finger on the pulse, and provided a surrogate folk-music. He gave the people what they wanted - songs about their own joys and sorrows, their exiles and reunions, their lovers and their mothers.
"Plus", continues Cryptic Jim, "Big Tom looked perfect. He wasn’t a star-symbol, but the opposite. Like John Wayne he looked ordinary - only indestructably, so.
"You will observe that Big Tom's face resembles the side of a mountain. It is cracked and weatherbeaten and it doesn’t so much grow old, as erode. He is therefore, the obvious symbol of the Old standing against the new invading culture.
“If you happened to be reading the Irish Times of September 9th last, you may have noticed a map detailing the pattern of the voting in the so called abortion referendum; and you may also have noted that Glenamaddy - which, as we know, is the centre of the kingdom in which Big Tom’s rule is still absolute - was slap-bang in the middle of the region which returned the slap-bang in the middle of a massive reactionary, cultural counter-wave sweeping in from the west coast.
“In my view”, Jim says “the Amendment result in rural Ireland represents not so much an active, hostile opposition to what are called the new Urban, liberal, intellectual values as merely a passive indifference to them.
"Similarly with Big Tom the closing in of his audience him, is symptomatic not so much of hostility towards what we might call the New Polycultural Salad, peddled by the mass-media as a sort of disinterested passivity towards it. The underlying cause of both of these phenomena is much closer to lethargy than it is to reaction". “But people will tire of a constant diet of Polycultural Salad. They'll find it bland, tasteless and boring. People need some roughage. And, let's face it, they don't come any rougher than Big Tom! Har,har!
This is Jim's idea of a joke - in very bad taste, as I very quickly pointed out.
"When that happens" concludes the Cryptic One, "the padlocks you mention, will be removed".
And Big Tom will still be King?
"And Big Tom will still be King".
So it goes.

The Biography
Big Tom wasn't always Big Tom. He-was born plain Tom McBride, on a small farm outside Castleblaney. He declines to say just how many years ago, but does reveal that he was “very young at the time”.
Tom was one of a family of six-four boys and two girls of whom four survive, including Tom. He attended the local national school whenever he had no other choice. He never liked school, rarely did homework and "schemed" as much as possible when the weather was fine.
He left school at fourteen, and got his first job, working on a neighboring farm for five shillings a week. After that he got a job in a flaxmill, for thirty-five shillings. It was the big-time.
Sometimes around the start of the 1950’s, one of Tom’s mates got the notion of taking off for Scotland to look for work. Tom decided to go along as well, and managed to land a job as a “chairman” to an engineer on a hydro-electric scheme. “He did the easy work and I did the hard work,” he says.
Within a few months, a death occured in Tom’s friends’ family and the duo returned to Ireland. When they left again it was for London, where Tom started work in an ice cream factory. Around this time the pair forked out seven pounds each for a guitar between them, and immediately set about learning chords and songs. Tom had a great love of country music, a relic of long evenings spent at home in Monaghan listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the McBride family's wind-up gramophone. After a couple more years in London, Tom headed for the channel Islands, where he spent a year and a half, engaged in various activities, from cable-laying to tomato-picking. In 1959, about a year after receiving a severe fall from a bicycle, Tom's younger brother developed meningitis, and died. At the request of his parents Tom returned to Monaghan to look after the family farm.
Over the next few years, working part-time on the farm and fulltime as a steel-erector, putting up haysheds, Tom somehow managed to find time for music. He began with a ceili-oriented group called The Finncairn Ceili Band who played mostly at dinner dances, G.A.A. functions, and weddings. Tom was the rhythm guitar player, singing the odd song.
Sometime later, the Finncairns changed their names to the Mainliners. They split and reformed, before beginning to make a reasonable living playing small halls for five or six pounds a night. The lead-singer was somebody called Ginger Morgan; Big Tom was still on 'rhythm'.
There is a famous story told about the Mainliners bands around this time. Somebody is said to have asked the band’s manager how things were going with the band, and he’s supposed to have replied that the band would be alright, if only they could get rid of "that big eejit of a guitar-player". A short time later, the Mainliners got a spot on the (self-explanatory) Showband Show, on RTE Television. Ginger Morgan sang three songs - "Pops" and stuff. Big Tom sang one, a song he had picked up in lonely faraway London, nearly ten years before. The song was called "Gentle Mother". The Plain People of Ireland jammed the RTE switchboard all that night going stone mad for it.
By popular demand of the Plain People Of Ireland, "Gentle Mother" was released as a single. "Gentle Mother" didn't get played on the radio. "Gentle Mother" died. A year later it was exhumed, and tentatively re-released. This time it took off. Big Tom became the lead-singer with the Mainliners.
The rest is legend.

The Interview
“She hailed the yellow cab, and she hollered, ‘goodbye Snowy,/Now she reigns like a queen on a younger fellow’s throne. But hail, rain or snow/ I’m gonna go and show her,/ Though there’s frost on the rooftops,/ There’s fire down below.” - J. McCauley

Upstairs in the Sound Of Music Club, Glenamaddy, somewhere up above the box-office, way behind the stage, there is a room which is ostensibly a dressing-room. I say ostensibly, because the room is quite obviously a fall-out shelter. It's a very small and dark room. There is a toilet-closet in one corner and a cupboard on one wall. I resist the temptation to open the copboard to see if it contains any of Albert Reybold's dogfood and sit down on one of the two available chairs.
Big Tom occupies the remaining chair, as well as half of the fallout shelter.
John Waters: Something bothers me, Tom, that song "Hail, Reign or Snow", I suspect it might contain one or two double entendres. This "fire down below" business ...
Big Tom: That’s right, year! Ha, ha, ha! You could think what you liked about that! I thought that it was cute, the way it was put y'know? Because many a time there, if you see a house, like, you'd see snow on the roof. But that doesn't mean that there's no fire inside. It was very well put. But the way it's put in the song, it doesn't mean that. It means something else! I think it's good alright! Ha, ha ha!
Have you ever, in your time, had any trouble with the clergy?
No, I never had any trouble with clergy of any description."
Because ballrooms were notorious at one time for certain goings on in parked cars and such like weren't they?
"Yeah, but I dunno. If you watched that "Ballroom Of Romance" - there's no cars in that! I think there’s one car in it or something. But it wu the bar of bike! And think they were speakin' about goin' into a field at one stage! Y’know? If that's goin' on, it's goin' on anyway. Y'know? But maybe they had a bit more comfort in cars!!
“I don't think the dan cehalls bred that sort of thing. If it’s there, it's there. It's goin' t' be there, no matter if they stay in their own house or if they meet at the crossroads. Boy meets girl, that's it".

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Apart from Your own interests, would you regret the passing of the ballroom era?
''Yeah. I'll tell you, until’ the last six or seven years 95% of the people that met, fell in love and got married- that’s where they met, in the ballrooms. Because everybody went dancin’ back a lock a’ years ago, and it was the only place for dancin’ back a lock a’ years ago, and it was the only place for boy - meets - girl, y’know? And I think it was a helluva lot simpler in the ballroom because the girls were standin’ along one side and the fellas would stand along the other side. And everybody, that was standin’ there wanted to dance, like. And you knew they wanted to dance, because they were standin’ there! You might go over and you might get refused; but you’d get someone else, like, y’know? But the way they meet now, I dunno, like, it’s different. It wouldn’t suit me anyway.”
In what way?
Well, if you go to a cabaret, say most people are sittin’ down and that. And you’d want to be fairly forward to go over to a table, from sittin’ at another table, and ask someone to dance. Because everybody’s sittin around, and if you get refused you’ll be walkin’ back and, y’know - cheeks red!! Ha, ha, ha! And you’ll say, “well I won’t try that again! In the dancehalls that happened all the time, but it didn’t worry you so much.”
In your time, I suppose you were probably regarded as a sort of unofficial matchmaker. Maybe still are.
“Ha, ha, ha, I’m in enough trouble the way I am!! No, but I do meet a lot of people, maybe ten years after they got married and maybe they have kids an’ that, and they’ll say ‘well, we met at such ‘n’ such a place that you were playin’, y’know? So many years ago. And I say, well, once they’re talkin’ to you, it’s not so bad! Ha, ha, ha!!
On the other hand, a lot of your songs are about separation, exile and so on. Sad. Songs.
“I often call meself a singer of sad songs. Y’know? Or a sad singer of sad songs! I dunno, that’s the type of songs that I like. I like a song with a story. And it’s either a love song, or as you say, a song about someone going away”
Do you think the Irish are a sad people?
"Yeah, We're a sentimental race of people. There's no doubt about it. We've had a lot of trouble down through the years so maybe we have reason for it!"
Do you enjoy going around the country - travelling and so on?
"I don't like travellin'. But most of the time enjoy playin' and talkin' to people Y'know? You get to know an awful lot of people 'round the country, when you're at this game as
long as I'm at it!"
Do you know them by name?
"I know a lot of people by seein' them. I haven't a great memory for names. A lot of the time you'd see people and you wouldn't be able to call them by their name, but you know
you've seen them hundreds of times before"
Would you meet a lot of women in this game?
"Ah, not at all! No!”
No?
"Hmmp! Not half enough!! Ha, ha, ha!"
You mean there are no groupies??
"Ah, I don't think you'd find that so much · country music! Maybe the pop groups an that. With pop music fans, they follow one singer this week and follow someone else next week. Whereas, if you make a fan in country music, they'll follow you every week. Or every time you're in their area".
Have you any strong politics?
"Ah not really, no. The best man win, that's me!"
Don't you support any party?
"Well I have me own views on politics. I don’t go into it strongly. I vote for a particular party, and that’s it!
You wouldn’t like to tell me which party?
“Hmmp? Ha, ha, ha, ha!!”
It wouldn’t be Fianna Fail, would it?
“Well if it wasn’t. It would be Fine Gael! Ha, ha, ha!”
Since this conversation, I read in an old interview with Paschal Mooney who, after all, should know about such things - that Tom was, or is, in Paschel’s words “an oul’ Blueshirt!”
Are you a republican?
“Not really, no. Naw. Not really. I never get into that sort of thing. Because I play a lot on both sides of the border, y'know? And I'd say I have a lot of fans who Protestant people - who buy a lot of my records. My father was a Protestant. My mother was a Catholic, and we were brought up Catholics.”
Would you like to see a United Ireland?
"I'd love to see the Irish people happier than they are at the moment. It's too bad that so many people have got killed, like. No doubt about it. Innocent people".
But there was that attempted kidnapping incident a couple of years back .
Two masked armed men came to the back door of Tom's house in Castleblaney asking to see him. His wife managed to get away from them and locked herself and their four children into a bedroom where they remained for several hours, until Tom returned - by which time the raiders had disappeared.
"Yeah. Well there was a lot of speculation. I'm not sure, and there's no point in me sayin' what I think. You can't identify people with masks on them; and even the Gardai came out and asked the wife would she have any idea, and nearly put names, y'know, in her head. But there's no point".
What do you think it was about?
"Well, you never know, like. They could've been lookin' for money".
The Provos do you think?
"I dunno. Instead of what they call Sinn Fein, it could've been Me Fein, sort of thing!
Are you a religious man?
"Ah, I wouldn't say I'd be gospel-greedy or that, like I used to go to church and I would still go to church only a lot of times it’s awkward because you might come in at five or six o'clock in the mornin' and you might be goin' away the next day at two o'clock. I go to church every chance I get, yeah, and I like to see that the kids go to church, and go to mass every Sunday"
Do you approve of capital punishment?
Well, no. Capital punishment is something I wouldn’t be on for, now. I wouldn't like to be part of anything that would say that a man has to die because he killed another man. But I know you have to be punished if you do wrong, and that".
I read somewhere that you have a fear of flying, did you have a really bad experience?
Well I had one awful fright. We were comin' home from a tour in England, and we were just takin' off from London airport and one of the engines caught fire!
"So the pilot was that far gone on take-off that he had to take-off anyway. Y'know? But he knew the engine was on fire and he had to go out - you know London airport, like, there's planes comin' in and out every couple of minutes, and they had to get the area clear to get back in. And I remember most of us were pretty scared!"
What went through your mind?
"Well, I'll tell you now, any lock of prayers that I knew, I said 'em!! It was a frightening thing, because when we were comin' back in to the runway we could see, from the plane, the rows of ambulances and fire-brigades commin' out from the main building.
But we got down alright. I remember sayin' no way was I gain' back on another aeroplane!
"I hadn't flown for eleven years up until this summer. In July, I went to America and I flew more in one week than I flew in me lifetime up to that. But I still don't like it.
How do you like the States?
“Ah, it’s too fast and too hot! The time we were in it was July and we were in Fort Worth one day and it was 14 degrees. And I'll tell you something - it was hot!
Are you a wealthy man?
"I wouldn't say that I'm a wealthy man. got a good run out of this business alright, like. But I wouldn't say that I'm a wealthy man".
Do you drink much? I notice you don't drink before you go on.
"No That's one golden rule that I've kept, that I've stuck to, because it happened me maybe once or twice in the early stages, you meet someone, and you have two drinks and in the finish up, you have too many!"

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What would you drink?
“I’ll take a pint of Smithwicks. Or maybe a vodka.”
What else would you do in your spare time?
“Well, I play a bit of golf. And walk around the farm some days.”
Is it a big farm?
“Around a hundred acres. I don’t do that much work on it/ But I like goin’ out and walkin’ around.”
What are your favorite actors?
“I like Charles Bronson, John Wayne and Alan Ladd. And I liked Lee Van Cleef.”
Do you listen to music at home?
“Very, very little. Unless I was on the look out for new songs.”
What was the last record you bought?
“You’re askin’ me now! I bought five or six L.P’s in Manchester. I think one was a Don Williams L.P.”
Do you read much?
"I read a good bit. I read books an that, y'know? I used to be a great fan of Zane Gray an' that. I like that type of story. I wouldn't read a love-story, or something like that. I would not!"
Do you read the papers?
"Aye, I'd look through the paper every morning".
What paper would that be?
"Ha, ha! You’re tryin' to find out my politics again! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! The daily paper! Ha, ha, ha ha!
If you had to work in a job where there was a woman over you would it bother you?
I don't think it would. Sure, I have a woman at home and she's over me all the time! Ha, ha, ha!"
What’s the greatest disadvantage of being Big Tom?
"Well, I'll tell you, one of the greatest disadvantages is tryin' to look after the taxman! Ha, ha, ha! But, ah, I'd say one of the biggest disadvantages is like, a lotta times, you go in someplace and there's always someone recognises you. Y'know? And you do get embarrassed. You hear people sayin' 'look there's Big Tom!' But ahh, it's been good to me!"
Do you feel uncomfortable onstage?
"In dancehalls an' that, where people are dancin' and movin' around, that doesn't worry me. But I'll tell you now, the last few years we've done a little bit of cabaret and we've done some concerts and that, - and people sittin' there, watchin' you. That rattles me alright! I'd be nervous. I'd be shakin' before I go on".
Are you a romantic kind of guy?
"Ah, I don't know! (Pause) I ah ... I don't read a lotta love stories or anything like that!! Well, I suppose women do that mostly, - they read love stories 'n' that. But I wouldn't be into that sort of thing. Or I wouldn't watch a love film on the television. I wouldn't be into that sort of thing. But, ah, I suppose you have a certain amount of - I dunno what you'd call it - in you, y'know? Feelin's or that ... romantic feelin's or what ever. I love the wife 'n' kids, but (pause) I don't think I'd be a J. R. Ewing, kind of a guy!! Ha, ha, ha!"

Big Tom is a gentleman. He is also a gentle, polite patient man, with a nice line in deadpan humor. Sometimes when he makes a joke, he looks at you wide-eyed, as though he doesn't know what you're laughing at. Sometimes you can't help thinking that here is a man who, if he wanted, could sell Dinny Byrne back his own free-range eggs!

The Performance

Onstage, Big Tom, dressed in a red-jacket, white pants and a white open-necked shirt is surrounded by half-a-dozen men his age, wearing black pants, red shirts and bright sequinned waistcoats. Big Tom, singing country, alternates at the mike with man with tight pants and an indoor hairdo, who sings, the "pops" and does all the introductions. Big Tom rarely speaks if at all. The "props" are awful, but some of the country songs are incredible, mixing melancholia with an unerring comic vision.
Big Tom is all business. He hardly ever moves his big frame except to walk up to, and away from, the microphone.
He's cheerful, winking in his odd slow way at the odd punter, mostly the women. But overall, he has the look of a man who would be much happier behind the wheel of a muckspreader than a guitar.
The crowd, dance away, happily and busily, performing the highly complex manoeuvre known as the “jive.”
I close my eyes and think of the Polycultural Salad. Suddenly, I have a vision of a huge plate containing dozens of figures, including Gay Byrne, Chris Cary, Paschal Mooney, Kevin Marron, Larry Gogan and Big Tom all involved in frenzied multilateral copulation. Big Tom is the only one who has all his clothes on.
I open my eyes and Cryptic Jim is there.
“You are developing an eye for the absurd” He cautions, “and people have been locked up for less. And remember too, that absurdity is only valid as an artistic concept, if the artist is aware of its presence.”
I don’t quite know what Jim meant by that. But then Jim is like that sometimes. Cryptic.

The Epilogue

Mattie is in the car-park indulging in chicken and chips. “Take me home, take me home” he remarks conversationally, as we come out.
“Oh Lord, I’ve been gone for so long, Isn’t that it?”
Couldn’t agree more, Mattie.
“Four roads from Glenmaddy, four roads that drift apart.”
“Isn’t that it?”
That, as you say, Mattie is it.
“To the land of my heart, through the heart of my land…
Down the street, I ask Cryptic Jim what he makes of Mattie.
“I dunno”, He muses, a puzzled look on his face. “I was asking him where he gets the stuff but he just kept right on sining’”
“I think he must be growing his own” Jim says.