Lost in Europe

Jackie Hayden: It seems to be an open secret that you did not entirely enjoy the whole Eurovision experience and its aftermath. Would that be an accurate assumption?

Paul Harrington: It would be, yeah, although of course the whole excitement of the winning night and being part of such a major event was a great experience. Partly I was concerned about suddenly finding myself as part of something involving two other equal partners, Charlie McGettigan and the songwriter Brendan Graham. I think I was unnerved about losing the control I had always enjoyed through doing my own thing as a solo artist. But I had to ask myself whether it was an ego thing before I convinced myself that I didn’t resent the involvement of the others. A lot of people would have seen winning Eurovision as a brilliant step for me but that would have been a view based on ignorance of the practical situation of getting on with doing well in Ireland.

Was it that you had unrealistic expectations about what it might lead to?

Not really. Initially it was a toss up whether I agreed to sing the song or not. But as it came at a particularly quiet period in my solo career, I thought ‘What have I got to lose?’ The prospect of winning it did not really come into it at that stage. Even if I came last, I thought nobody would notice anyway! Besides, I’m the kind of bloke who prepares himself for disappointment. It helps me cope. But with the furore of winning, people were saying ‘that’s it, you’ve got it made now’. Yet I think there was a point when both myself and Charlie independently felt that we should go back to our separate careers but we decided to follow through on the victory and got Brendan Graham, the writer of ‘Rock’n’Roll Kids’, to manage us and we set up our own record label. In one sense it probably would have been crazy, after winning Eurovision, not to see how far we could capitalise on it, if there were any decent deals going.

Were there any deals in the offing?

Only for the single. Maybe if we’d had an album available straight off that might have swung a deal, but I don’t know.

Is it possible that the record industry now sees Eurovision as just a television programme with little relevance off the screen, and that the music is really incidental to it?

I’m inclined to agree. In my experience it became almost a national pride thing, and that may offend those who told me it was a great song, brilliantly sung and so on. But even if we’d won with a load of garbage there still would have been that national euphoria.

Despite the fact that we’ve won it six times, none of the winning artists or songwriters have made it big outside Ireland. Even Johnny Logan, who was involved with three of those victories has only had a couple of minor hits in the UK and become the proverbial ‘big in Turkey’.

Well I believe Johnny has done quite well out of it. But I wonder if it ever did mean as much as we think it did. I know you can point to Abba and a few other acts, but most of the artists who won Eurovision have since disappeared from international view. Some might still be big in a couple of countries, including their own, but probably nowhere else.

But at one stage it was almost automatic that the winning song would be a huge hit all over Europe and a follow-up album would do well initially in most territories.

Well it certainly didn’t happen for us! Although Brendan was new to the game at that level, I’m sure he did the best he could. But now I want to get back to my own solo performing and to a situation where I know who I’m dealing with myself.

Would the somewhat jaundiced view you seem to have of some people in the business explain why you ended up setting up your own record label Eaton Records to release your own album What I’d Say and several singles yourself?

It would. I had been dealing with Paul Keogh at Polygram Ireland who told me it was between me and Liam Reilly as to who he would sign. I couldn’t hang about any longer and while it’s been a mixed experience, it’s been generally good for me and I have the comfort of knowing that I’m in control of my situation more than I would had I signed with a major. Indeed had I not increased my profile by getting my own records out and getting them played and written about I might not have even been considered to sing in the National Song Contest.

If you put on your songwriter hat, do you view Eurovision any differently to the way you view it as a performer?

I’ve never entered a song for it and I still have the same opinion of it musically as I always had.

What opinion is that?

That it required a certain style of music that was not where I was at.

Are you uncomfortable with the formula approach?

Yeah. I don’t write to formula. I don’t write a song with a view to winning a competition. Although lots of money can be made out of it.

But most people who see you winning Eurovision, doing gigs all over the place and putting out records think you’re making a packet.

Of course they do. They forget that Eurovision is a songwriter’s gig and the winning act does not get anything more than a fee for performing the song that night.

So do you think you lost out personally by getting lost in the whole Eurovision thing?

Yes, a lot of time was lost to my own solo career. I spent a lot of time touring around Europe as part of a duo promoting one song that has nothing to do with me as a solo artist and songwriter. I still can’t see what all that was meant to achieve. At the time I think I thought it might consolidate the proposed album deal, but the record company didn’t do as well as they thought they would with the single and they backed off. When you take yourself out of circulation some people stop calling you to book gigs. For a start they assume that you’ll have become too expensive.

Might some venues also have assumed that Paul Harrington solo artist was gone and that he had been replaced by The Rock’n’Roll Kids?

Yes, that’s a problem for me, although it’s not a problem for me to work with Charlie for whom I have a lot of respect and with whom I get on well. But the tag and the label and the package was a problem and I personally don’t think the Rock’n’Roll Kids package is as saleable as originally perceived. Although we have a good show, it’s not where I want to be and I’m not even sure if it’s where Charlie wants to be either.

But if the album was selling by the bucketload and the gigs were pouring in and it was all working, would you still feel the same way?

Almost certainly not. I’m as fickle as the next guy. But no matter how well you prepare yourself for the reality of winning Eurovision there is always a part of you that somehow believes that you could do very well out of this. When it doesn’t happen you get a little mad at deluding yourself.

But would it be accurate to say that for Paul Harrington nothing came out of winning Eurovision?

(long pause). I don’t think so. Nothing of substance anyway. Of course I got my first number two hit single, my first double-platinum disc, and all that’s great, but I wonder how real the whole thing was and how much of it, if any, rubbed off on my solo career which is where I’m really at.

But there will be some people around the country saying “what’s wrong with this guy?”. Some people would give their right arm to have done what you did!

I know they would, but that may be their naïvety. I don’t know any of my fellow musicians who would have that naïve attitude. They might say ‘well done’ but that’s as far as it goes. I think Eurovision is separate from the real music world. In one sense I’m very grateful to have won. It was a great achievement but it has to be seen for what it is. Maybe if you come through it and get something out of it the gloom lifts. It would be easy to say that if we were all making a fortune we would all be as happy as Larry, but I don’t think it’s quite true as I for one would not be doing what I want to do.

Is it true that your fee for the whole thing, that whole week of rehearsals, media work and the show itself is somewhere in the region of £3,000?

That’s about the size of it, yeah. That’s all you get. Of course they cover your expenses as well, hotels and so on. Only the songwriter gets the prize.

But you did lots of television shows, so wouldn’t they bring in a few grand as well?

Some do, like Budapest television, but some don’t. Some of it is regarded as promotion and you only get a token fee or your expenses.

You had to set up your own record label to put the single and the album out. How much of that money went to fund the recording and the releases?

I didn’t put any personal money into the single, but I did for the album out of fees from gigs abroad and from the single deal we did.

Was it true the advance for the single was £30,000?

Yes, that would be about right. That was a good advance, I thought.

So with that advance, a number two chart single and an album that must be selling at least modest quantities, how come there are rumours that you are in the red?

Well, it costs a lot of money to do an album and we inadvertantly overstepped ourselves. I hope we do well out of it, but it’s an uncomfortable feeling when you know there’s a debt there that you have to work to clear.

But is it still in the red?

I’m afraid so.

A lot of people would find that hard to believe.

I suppose they would, as I do myself! To me, I don’t think it should have happened, it could have been avoided. Personally, I never believed it was necessary to do a full album. There was ample material for a compilation between us from previous releases such as my own What I’d Say album, some of Charlie’s solo stuff plus maybe one or two fresh recordings. If that had been sold to Europe fairly quickly it might have opened up a whole new market.

Is that where the bulk of the money went, into the album?

Essentially, yeah.

What do you think of the album?

A lot of it I like. Some tracks, had I been the sole producer, I would not have allowed on. But some turned out very well. Trying to merge my style and Charlie’s style was difficult. But we pressurised ourselves to get the job done quickly to capitalise, as we thought, on winning. But with all the running around Europe we had no time to plan or rehearse. We spent four or five days trying to get to know each other in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annamacarraig in Monaghan, a place I personally would not recommend to anybody.

Why not?

There’s great peace and quiet, but it’s a strange environment with its own schoolmasterish regime. But some people obviously love it. At that time myself and Charlie were overly keen to compromise about things that we would now feel confident enough about to say no.

Was there friction between you?

Before we did the album there was. We ran into a problem of my making. It manifested itself in a time-keeping problem, but it was really a symptom of me not wanting to get involved at all. I should have been honest enough to have said so, instead of wasting everybody’s time. But even after I got stuck into it 150%. I was still inclined to have a “be reasonable, do it my way” approach. But we are not a natural duo, and Charlie is a fine, decent chap and we learned to deal with points of difference. But just because two performers get a blend that works on one song it is wrong to base an entire career on it.

If the phone rang and it was another well-known writer inviting you to sing his or her song in the next National Song Contest how would you react?

(laughs) I’d say, “Sorry, I’ve done it, I’ve won it and I don’t want to go through that again”. There would be no challenge in it for me.

There were allegations that RTE’s behaviour in relation to the Irish team was somewhat bizarre. There was, for example, the story that people related to the performers or the writer could not get tickets for members of their own family, while a person with no connection to the event whatsoever was able to boast that he got six tickets from a member of the RTE hierarchy?

There was some tension initially about that, yeah. You’d be told that it looked unlikely that they could facilitate this request or that request, but in the end Anita Notaro was magnificent and sorted out all the problems.

There was the other bizarre situation when your PR people Brookham came up with the idea of me spending the entire Eurovision day, from the crack of dawn, shadowing you for a Hot Press cover story, but RTE shot it down on the basis that if they did that for us they would have to do it for everybody.

Had I been aware of that at the time I would have tried to make an issue of it. It would have been a good idea too, because I don’t think that’s been done before and apart from anything else I would love to have a diary of that particular day. I can’t for the life of me think why they would not have co-operated, but RTE were running the show. But I would like to compliment Brookham PR, with whom I’m no longer involved much to my regret.

What were the biggest plusses about winning Eurovision?

Without a doubt the pleasure it brought to my parents and family. Winning Eurovision is a really tangible kind of stardom which they can really relate to and their delight gave me a lot of pleasure. It also opened doors for the family and brought them a little fame too and confidence.

And what are the biggest negatives?

Before all this happened I had a close friend doing my PR. A brother helped with some PR and musical direction. Another friend did my design. A lot of that was dismissed and I’ve lost all that sense of cameraderie which it’s unlikely I’ll ever get back again, and that inadvertently upset some people. Equally, they might be thinking that I don’t need them which is not the case. My persona, built on what I had done up to Eurovision, was virtually wiped out and disregarded in the approach to this project and that irritates me.

How did it affect personal relationships?

Initially people can handle you disappearing for periods because that’s the nature of the music business. But when so much of your time gets eaten into, people get browned off with the odd phonecall between long patches of silence and eventually they begin to forget about you. Dealing with the endless interviews, answering the same questions over and over and over again and the receptions, much as I enjoy them, all take their toll on your time and your energies and it’s something you cannot be prepared for.

Did it ever really get to you?

It did about two months ago, just before the album came out. It was about one o’clock in the morning and I was at home. The whole pressure of it really overwhelmed me and I became deeply depressed.

How did it affect you?

I just cried and cried and cried uncontrollably for at least four or five hours. I was so hopelessly bewildered by the whole situation. I had no idea what it was all about or where it was all meant to lead and I just couldn’t cope with it any more. Part of the tension probably came from not saying things I should have said to people, things maybe I’m saying to you now. But I think I knew that no matter what I felt I was now part of a three-man committee and I knew how the other two felt about most things. I’m not blaming them. Most of it was my own fault for not dealing with it better.

So how did you get out of that depression?

At first I genuinely thought I was having a nervous breakdown. Whether I was actually having one I don’t know, but I certainly felt that I was out of control. I had difficulty breathing. I’d go to bed, then I’d get up to make tea. Then I’d find myself draped over the counter and I hadn’t even had a drink! You see there were other pressures building up on me from the people who were involved with Eaton Records who wanted answers to questions about where I was going and asking was I sure I was doing the right thing. There was all this pressure on me to make sure this thing went right and yet I felt I couldn’t really do very much about it and didn’t know how to get out of it. Even Brendan himself will admit that he likes control and hates loose ends and maybe unbeknownst to both of us, I was a loose end!

How long did this last?

I suppose for a couple of days. Then I began to think, ‘Hold on, this isn’t worth all this. What’s the point in losing your mind over it?’. I told myself, ‘Look, it’s gone, it’s over, there isn’t a fortune to be made out of all this’. And I think when I accepted the truth of that, it made it easier to deal with and I suppose I had been avoiding that reality for too long. I spoke to Charlie and explained my frustrations. I said that we were both victims, that we had both been thrown into something and he will probably admit that I would not have been his ideal partner either. Sure I made some money, but in some cases I gave up solo paying gigs to do a Rock’n’Roll Kids gig for the same money.

It seems strange that this depression came after you achieved what many will regard as considerable international success, whereas in the past you must have had tougher times struggling to get a record out and then having to do it all yourself.

Yeah, but I did all that stuff, setting up Eaton Records and recording the releases a little at a time. I had people with me and there was a great spirit about it at the time. I’ve been asked if the night of Eurovision was the happiest night of my life, but it wasn’t. The night I launched my first album made me far more proud because it was something I had done against all the odds from scratch.

So how much longer will the Rock’n’Roll Kids concept continue?

(laughs) Until we’re out of debt! We’ll do whatever gigs are lined up in tandem. It’s not a case of me wanting to get out of it. But it all became a mishmash without any focus.

But do you want to get back at some point to working as Paul Harrington?

Indeed I do. My plan is to take up where I left off, writing new songs for my solo album. Unfortunately I had assumed there would be some money from the duo project to put into my solo stuff but there isn’t, so it might take a little longer than I expected. But I did it before and I will do it again.