Open Hearts Surgery

Christ, What A Planet
*It is said we live in modern times,
In the civilised year of 'seventy-nine,
But when I look around, all I see
Is modern torture, pain and hypocrisy.*
- Bobby Sands

Sometimes I wish I might cry for a year, if I could believe for a moment it would do any good. Sometimes when the flickering images of piled-up, mutilated corpses in the streets of Beirut or Belfast, or the agonised, barely breathing, emaciated bodies of the children of Cambodia, or the horrendously scarred faces of the *survivors* of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - or a thousand other images of tyranny and death from every corner of this gory globe - flit Across the TV screen, I wish I could burst into tears, and in that abject act exorcise this festering abscess of fear, grief, horror, anger, shame and guilt. Tears, however, are not enough.
The fear, the grief, the horror, the anger are one thing - they speak for themselves, and perhaps in an odd way give their own kind of comfort. Not even the constant process of inoculation effected by the incessant bombardment of our collective consciousness with simulated television violence and inhumanity - not even the fact that in the context of our daily lives, these images of barbarity invariably come sandwiched between Starsky and Hutch and Muhammad Ali eating a cheeseburger - can totally anaesthetise us against their horrific reality. But the guilt, now that's something else again.

Guilt-Edge Security
*But the dollars like swallows they fly to the south
Where they know they've something to gain
- Allende is killed - and the trucks are rolling again.

It's a long way from the heartland, to Santiago Bay,
Where the good doctor lies with blood
In his eyes, and the bullets read US of A.*
- Don Lange ('Allende')

Let's not talk about sides, in terms of Left and Right, Communist or Capitalist, Goodie Goodie Cowboys or Big Bad Bears. These are not the poles of good and evil, wrong and right. The flags and the rhetoric may be different, but the purpose is the same. The most real divisions in the world are between oppressor and oppressed, top-dog and underdog, haves and have-nots. What it's about, in London or Leningrad, in Warsaw or Washington, is the repression of the poor and weak to maintain the position of the rich and powerful.
El Salvador doesn't cancel out Poland, no Chile Afghanistan - the regimes in control are all equally wrong, and any idea that they in some way excuse each other is as ludicrous as the notion on which nuclear deterrence is based: that the more terrifying the power of destruction in reserve on each side, the more secure we all become.
But for you and I and the person next door, who find ourselves - even if through no fault or choice of our own - under the snug right-wing of the US, it is with the actions of the Americans and their allies that we must most immediately concern ourselves.
And for each of us, there can only be one question: in the struggle between the weak and the powerful, the oppressed and the oppressor, where do w stand? Because try as we might, indulge as we might in political semantics, or plunge as we might our heads in the sand, we cannot escape from the fact that for the most part the atrocities, the injustices, the sundry acts of repression, the rampant denial of human rights, the toleration if not the active generation of poverty, hunger and disease - all of which are perpetrated daily on our side of the fence - are done, allegedly at least, on our behalf; either in the name of an economic or political system on which we depend for our existence, of a religious denomination to which as a people we have given our allegiance, or simply in the name of *liberty* and *The Free World*.
And for all our crocodile tears and our *humanitarianism*, our prayers and our platitudes, our pity and our occasional tenpence in the box-for-the-black-babies, nothing if we're honest, can protect us from the gnawing uneasy awareness that, as long as we continue to live in silence and submission within a society that depends for its relatively comfortable way of life on the suppression of the rights of others, we are all equally guilty. While our voices fail to articulate dissent, it can only be supposed that this situation exists with, if not our outright blessing and approval, at least our tacit consent.
Of course we - you and I - the Young-People-Of-Ireland - are supposed not to care. We are - are we not - *indifferent*, *unconcerned,* *cynical*. Conditioned from an early age by one of the most barbaric and reactionary educational systems in the world to think - if that's the operative word - conservatively, to fear, to be subservient, we're then presented with choices which aren't choices at all and told to pay our money and lump it. If we refuse we are *apathetic* (refusing to vote for Sean Doherty), *faithless* (not believing in the parish priest) and *immoral* (believing that it is better to make love than to kill).
Intellectually numbed and politically illiterate, is it any wonder that the Irish people are easily confused and become a ready and pliable substance for manipulation by those who have most to gain. To switch the spotlight from their own monumental incompetence and hob-nobbing with dictators and despots, our politicians search for easy scapegoats, blur the issues and blind us to the naked exploitation at home and abroad, by plunging our heads in buckets of red herrings.
Our politicians beat their law and order drum and lecture incessantly about the level of crime - crime that in a less criminal kind of society would be unnecessary. Even as I write, on this Sunday morning, scores of them all over the country will be pontificating from the butter boxes outside church gates about their determination to tackle the *scourge* of abortion and congratulating themselves and their supporters on their *pro-life* stance - contemptuously ignoring the fact that even as they speak, even as I write, even friend as you read, there are at a conservative estimate, twenty lonely and bewildered Irish women sitting alone on some boat or plane on their way to have a pregnancy terminated; that twenty more are sitting on different boats or planes on their way back and twenty more are in situ, having the job done. And they're not doing it because abortion is the *easy* option - but because in many instances, it is the only one.
Everywhere within the corridors of power is mediocrity, indifference and paranoia. The people in charge, with few exceptions, fear injustice far less than leftism, repression less than rebellion, the red of spilled blood less than the red of communism, and war and death less than sex; the only thing to which they're committed is to changing nothing.
So, in the absence of any hope of immediate change, what can a poor boy or girl do? Take refuge in rock'n'roll perhaps, and let the music take our spirits high? Those of us for whom that option managed to seep through the barriers of Establishment disapproval, censorship and thought policing, perhaps rightly, think ourselves lucky. But somewhere along the line the dream got sidetracked. By maintaining the illusion of rebellion and protest in rock, and using the same old baits of wealth, fame and sex, the Establishment, through the music biz hierarchy, succeeded n taking the rocks out of rock'n'roll, effectively defusing it. Apart from the odd desultory kick the once Great Blue Suede Hope had become soft and hush-puppied - *business*, *entertainment*, a harmless diversion; and in the eyes of the status quo an acceptable, even necessary, means of channelling potentially dangerous youthful energy into a form in which it posed or poses no threat.
Against that depressing backdrop Moving Hearts have rekindled the flame, in the two years of their existence, by being consistently outspoken on issues of public concern, adopting the role of spokespeople on behalf of oppressed minorities and individuals and attacking the corruption of the system we live under, and the lunacy of our leaders. There have been public misgivings, it is true, about the lengths Moving Hearts were prepared to go, but equally there has never been the slightest doubt about where they stood.

Heart To Heart Talk
The conversations reproduced here are in fact the result of not one, but two separate interviews - one recorded with the Hearts' bassist Eoghan O'Neill and saxist Keith Donald, the other with guitarist Declan Sinnott and new lead vocalist Mick Hanly, just recently drafted in to replace the departed Christy Moore. They were taped - for what it's worth - on the same day, in different parts of Dublin city and at varying stages of interviewer intoxication. The two interviews covered much common ground, and for the sake of coherency in the piece comments from each are juxtaposed where they co-relate. Where comments from, say, Declan and Keith or Eoghan and Mick are placed together it is for the sake of clarity and convenience and not as a result of chronological conversation. My own role is a relatively low key one, primarily concentrated on selection and organisation, a decision based on a feeling that, having been subjected to consistently tough scrutiny and often rigorous criticism, Moving Hearts deserve an opportunity to state their case without too much intrusion.

Shout It! Shout It Out!
*You can close your eyes
You can turn away
You can't deny what's going on
No matter what you say.*
- Declan Sinnott ('Let Somebody Know')

This song, Declan Sinnott's first songwriting effort to be performed by Moving Hearts, has been - of all the tracks on the band's recently released second album, Dark End Of The Street - the most widely criticised. Moving Hearts think it strange that while a year ago they were being rebuked by the critics for the extreme nature of their political beliefs and statements, this time around these self-same critics are complaining that 'Let Somebody Know' is weak, shallow, that it says nothing and is out of context with the rest of the material on the album - which apart from two instrumentals has a consistently high political quotient.
On one level the song does come across as a rather vague, innocuous, semi-lovesong, but on another, 'Let Somebody Know' could well be Moving Hearts' theme song, their manifesto, their statement of intent; speak your mind - say straight out exactly how you feel. Is this a fair summation of Moving Hearts' attitude and approach?
Declan?
*Not exactly,* maintains Sinnott, sitting between myself and Mick Hanly in Gaffneys of Cork Street. *We think very carefully about everything we say.*
Meanwhile, in Toners of Baggot Street, Keith Donald expounds the Moving Hearts' filtration system for ideas and opinions.
*Moving Hearts is a bunch of people with their own political views, who read the papers, who listen to the radio, who think a lot. There's a lot of debate, and it doesn't always centre around songs. There's a lot of debate that centres around things that happen.
*So then, when a song comes up, we have a discussion about it: and it's happened several times that in our co-op, any one person has the power of veto - so one person can say 'I'm not party to that, I will not stand on stage while you sing that song.' And a song can be vetoed as a result of that. But then somebody might come back and say, 'We can change the words this way and change the emphasis and direction of the song in a way that makes it more universal,' or whatever.
*There's all kinds of options, but any one person has the power of veto. We have never gone on stage and sung anything, or done anything, that we aren't all into.*
This exacting system of quality control suggests a level of detachment which is belied by the intensity of the music, particularly in the live situation. Surely there must be a greater degree of spontaneity in their responses than they are suggesting?
*No, we can't be spontaneous,* Declan declares before qualifying: *At this stage, it probably is, to some extent, but originally it wasn't. I mean, we'd keep arguing and talking about what areas we could all agree on and what areas we disagreed on. Now we kind of know them.*

The Love That Dare Not Breathe Its Name
*Time is going to take its toll
We'll have to pay for the love we stole
It's a sin and they say that it's wrong
Oh, but our love is growing so strong...*
- Chips Mo Man/Dan Penn ('The Dark End Of The Street')
*Would Moving Hearts take songs supporting homosexuals to the halls?* was Bill Graham's concluding throwaway question in the last Hot Press feature on Moving Hearts.
'Dark End Of The Street', as performed by The Flying Burrito Brothers or by Ry Cooder's backing vocalists Bobby King, Terry Evans and Eldridge King, seems a fairly straightforward song about clandestine love - another daytime-friends-and-nightime-lovers kind of song. Moving Hearts have changed one line in the song - originally *It's a sin and we know that it's wrong* to *It's a sin and they say that it's wrong* - which makes it an entirely different kind of ballgame. Add to this the evidence of the album cover photo of two shadowy, and apparently male, figures with their backs to the camera, walking down a dimly-lit street, and the Hearts' intentions would seem pretty clear.
Declan Sinnott is in the humour for ducking and feinting. *I think we're indicating that the song is about any kind of illicit relationship,* he maintains.
Yes, but the cover?
Declan: *What's on the cover?*
Two men. walking.
Declan: *Are you sure?*
Well, I was up to now.
Declan: *It just so happens that nobody in the band really knows.*
Back in Toners, Keith Donald had been saying much the same kind of thing.
*Are you sure?* he too had enquired. *Because it can go either way - you can read the words either heterosexually or homosexually.
*It could be about a daytime division - 'society won't let anything happen between us' sort of thing. Maybe it could be about a black guy and a white girl. It could be across a racial divide. It could also be across an economic divide: the big house and the fuckin' gate lodge!
Colm' [Colm Henry, the photographer who took the pictures and who is incidentally unavailable for comment] instructions were to make it ambiguous. And he did!*
Eoghan O'Neill: *I think the figure on the right - the one in the tweed coat - is a girl. But we don't really know who the people are. We gave Colm Henry a brief to do a photograph about this song. He knew what the song was about, and he knew what the album was about. It's an album about - the basic theme of it is very sad. It's more of a social album than the first one. I think the first was a more political album - this one is more social, and I think that's where the distinction is. I'm happiest with the content of this album - it attacks broader issues than the first one did.*
On the matter of the album cover Declan Sinnott is unable to be any more helpful. *I think the instructions were something like: 'Two people with their backs to the camera. They're both people, I know that!*
Later in the conversation, though, he was to concede: *Part of what we wanted to do with 'Dark End Of The Street' was to say something to homosexuals without saying something that everybody in the media, who wanted something to talk about, could latch onto. We didn't want it talked about. Our solidarity with certain things is not necessarily for show. And in 'Dark End Of The Street' we wanted to make a subtle point, so that certain people who wanted support could have it, and so that the media didn't get in the way and start chopping it up. And the ambiguity is entirely for that reason. Because you're simply talking about people who need support, and don't get it. It's not there for them. And I don't want critics, one way or the other, saying Moving Hearts should or shouldn't do this or that - or, are they right or wrong? - on a point like that. In fact on any of the points, I don't really want the critics' opinions, because there's so much misunderstanding.*

Another Grey Area
*England your sins are not over
The H-Blocks still stand in your name
And though many voices
Have cried out to you
It's still your shame.

If we stay silent we're guilty
While these men lie naked and cold
In H-Blocks tonight
Remember the fight
Of those on the blanket...*
- Mick Hanly ('On The Blanket)
The sage of Moving Hearts' alleged Republican sympathies has already been well chronicled. Their critics' reservations are perhaps understandable: that the band's professed sympathy with the hunger strike of 1981 could be interpreted as tacit support for the IRA, Christy Moore and the other Hearts have already replied to the critics - though not necessarily to the latters' satisfaction - but the fact that the author of their most controversial song, Mick Hanly, now finds himself thrust into the limelight and that he has not yet been given the opportunity of expressing his viewpoint and intentions makes it worthwhile to briefly reopen the case. How, then, did he feel about the reaction to 'On The Blanket'?
*Well I know that the first time I sang it, in Lisdoonvarna,* Mick recalls, referring to his guest spot with Moving Hearts at the Lisdoon Festival in 1981, *it was very hard for me to say what the reaction was. The song, to me, was a fairly blunt statement, because of the bluntness of the atmosphere we were living in at the time.
*It varied from place to place and from time to time. We kept re-writing the song, as well, when we started doing the Moving Hearts tour. Like, Patsy O'Hara died when we were on the tour, and we referred to that in one of the verses.
*And myself doing it. I used to do it on my own down in places like the Blue Shark in Kinsale. People had a kind of shocked reaction to it down there - a lot of them would have been tourists, in for ballads, or whatever; and suddenly to find themselves confronted with this thing again.*
But the song did indicate - did it not? - a degree of nationalistic or Republican sentiment.
Mick: *If it did come out that way, it wasn't meant to. I'll tell you: you could identify a certain amount of Republicanism in the fact that I felt England was to blame for what happened.*
Does this mean that Moving Hearts support the IRA?
Declan intervenes: *I don't support the IRA's more extreme actions. As a movement, I don't know if I support their ideals - it's not clear what they are. And that's my opinion.*
Yes, but while on the one hand it's quite possible to see the IRA as freedom fighters, as protectors of the oppressed minority in the north, isn't it also true that there's an extremely dark, dangerous, arguably neo-fascist aspect to their organisation. Bobby Sands' selfless idealism may have deserved him the accolade folk hero, but what of the others, closer to the top of the movement, who have long displayed that they have few scruples about how they manipulate this idealism?
Declan responds: *One thing you're talking about is very different characters. And with any organisation - even moving Hearts - the characters range... y'know, they're all very different. I can see that some of the actions of the IRA which put people off are the actions of very practical people who would have to feel about certain things. And I can appreciate what they're doing I just don't agree with it very much, mainly because I don't think it will achieve its purpose.*
Mick takes up the thread: *You're talking about a problem that's been with us now for the last fourteen years - physically on our doorstep. Like it' been there for an awful long time -eight or nine hundred years - but the violence is really on our doorsteps again now. And when I see this thing and try to comprehend what's goin' on right now - after fourteen years of murder and shoutin', they're sawin' guys hands off again! Y'know we're back to the barbarianism that marked the mid-seventies, whatever. And you say: 'What the fuck is going on? When is it going to stop? Who's going to stop it?'
*People are saying the IRA haven't a mandate, but this idea isn't confused at all. I think the mandate for the IRA is the use of plastic bullets - the continued use of them to kill kids. Like in an argument that you can throw in a person's face straight way. Why are plastic bullets being still used in the north? They're scientific things - they can kill you, and they're being used indiscriminately.
*Why doesn't England stop this? Is the whole thing a set-up? Are the British government sayin': 'Look, let these fucking whores kill each other for a few years - then we'll step in and get the troops out, or whatever. Fuck 'em. Throw a few soldiers across there and keep them nice and happy and let them slag each other in their hatred, and then we'll pull out with our side intact'??!!
*Fuck them!! Let them solve the problem! They started this thing - I don't care how far back it goes, it was they who put it there. Now, why don't they solve it? Or try to solve it?
*And I don't want to count out the south either,* Hanly concludes. *I believe in my heart and soul that there's nothing being done by the southern government to help the northern situation.*
To bring it back down to the music: anyone who has ever attended a Moving Hearts gig will be familiar with the tremendous emotional frenzy they are capable of whipping up - isn't there a very real danger that while reaching people on such an intense level they could, inadvertently or otherwise, incite people towards violence - perhaps even becoming unwitting recruitment agents for the IRA?
Declan: *After all the years of non-publicity for something that was going on in a prison in the north, for one band to play a few gigs and say what they thought is surely not... What I'm saying is, what do you do to get attention for that situation? We wanted to say that it is going on. It had been going on for four years, and the press wouldn't print it, and the radio wouldn't fuckin' give it out on the news. So what are you supposed to do?
*The emotional reaction to is - if there is an emotional reaction, and if it is encouraging people to join the IRA - well that's regrettable. But I think the percentage is small. If you're in a position of power, and you do anything at all, your effect tends to bring out both reactions - but I think the good we do is greater than the evil. That's all I can say.*
Mick: *It's very easy to tie a stand on behalf of the hunger strikers in with support for the IRA. And I think that's what the issue became. It split the country in half: and it ties in so well with the way the British have treated the Irish down through history. They split them, divide them, and keep them underfoot. Like, I saw on the march in Cork, for example, that certain people marched and certain people hid. They were the same community from southern Ireland - all the same people, all very conscious of what was going on, at that stage, because Bobby Sands was on his deathbed. But people were afraid to march because by then it had become that you were supporting the IRA. And you weren't supporting a guy who was dying for a high ideal - you were 'marching for murder'.*
Earlier, Keith Donald, speaking in broader terms, had summarised how Moving Hearts observe their wider responsibilities... *Musicians and actors and people like that are in a unique position, because most sociologists agree that people in those kind of positions are extra the class system. So musicians are in the position that they're not any definable class, and they're kind of objective as a result of that.
*I think if musicians keep their eyes closed - as I did for a long time - about where they are going and about what bands should be saying, and that - if musicians keep their ears and eyes closed to those kind of things, they're doing their profession a disservice. Because you're abusing your position of responsibility - as a musician and in your objective position in society.*

Remembering The Brave Ones
*And they made me for better or worse
The fool that I am, or the wise man I be,*
- Mick Hanly ('All I Remember')
The whole thing, of course, the attitude of every Irish person towards the nation's political developments, is inextricably tied up with the version of past events we've been fed. Anti-rhetoric, ambivalence and revisionism permeate the attitudes and statements of those who have most recently taken upon themselves the dominant role in interpreting the past. On the one hand they condemn the guerrillas of the present time as terrorists, and on the other hand glorify their natural predecessors to the point of nausea. Made-to-measure history!
One of the crucial things about Moving Hearts, for me, is their willingness to acknowledge that there are no absolutes. They acknowledge that the way we see things is necessarily coloured by the conditioning we have received.
Keith Donald: *It's a good point mind you: one is a product of one's conditioning. But you also have a duty to question your own upbringing. My upbringing was Northern Ireland Protestant, and if I didn't question that, where would I be now?!!
*The educational system conditions you - like there's about 70% conditioning in it - because of Church and State, in the modern society. But there's also 30% they teach you to think. It should be 100% they teach you to think - now it's 70% they condition you and 30% they teach you to think. That little bit sometimes escapes though and makes you question the 70%!*
Eoghan: *Y'see, when we were going to school, the Brothers were talking about Patrick Pearse and the whole thing. This was in 1966 when I was still in national school. Patrick Pearse was huge! Patrick Pearse could have sold out seven Simmonscourts!! Patrick Pearse was bigger than Chris de Burgh!!
*And there's a song that Mick Hanly sings - which is about the struggle, up through the years, from, say, the War of Independence up to the Hunger Strike - it's a song we may do with Moving Hearts. And there's one of the lines which says - I can't remember the exact words, but it went something like 'In 1966 our country sang the praises of the brave' - I can't make it rhyme, but the hookline goes something like 'they said he was a rebel then, but he's a hero now.' Which is to say that in fifty years' time it's quite possible that people may be talking about the people who are fighting in Northern Ireland at the moment as patriots rather than rebels.*

Digging With The Other Foot
Back in Toners, I wondered of Keith Donald where, as a Northern Protestant, he found himself in relation to the Moving Hearts' party line. How would his stance on issues relate to Christy Moore's position?
Keith: *Being a Protestant wouldn't have anything to do with it. When I was growing up, my family never went to church. I started going to church when I was eight, and eventually the rest of the family followed suit. And we all stopped when I was about ten or eleven. So being a Protestant has nothing to do with it, but I wouldn't be a million miles away from Christy, I might differ in methodology, but we'd be in the same position basically.*
Which is?
*Republican Socialist or Socialist Republican.*

The Beating Of Another Heart
*Wild Christian Brothers, sharpening their leathers...
Learn it by heart, that's the rule.
All I remember is dreading September and school...
- Mick Hanly ('All I Remember')
The Catholic Church glibly condemns violence as inexcusable, forgetting that up until quite recently it was they who, through their archaic and barbaric educational system, did most to instill the very concept of violence into the great mass of the Irish people.
Everyone has their own story to tell. Eoghan O'Neill fared worse than most.
*I didn't go to the Christian Brothers,* he recalls, *I went to the Patrician Brothers, who are even fuckin' worse. They're the boys who can't get into the Christian Brothers!!
*Christy, Donal and myself all had the same Patrician Brother, a guy called - well, I won't say his name!*
Keith: *His name is sub judice.*
Good man, Sub!
Eoghan: *Yeah! Brother Judice. Anyway, although he taught the two of them almost ten years before he taught me, he hadn't changed at all! And it was a very important ten years - it was like, the ten years between say 1957 or maybe '56 and '66, or whatever, and there was a lot of change, y'know. It was the time of Sean Lemass and the new technology and opening airports and all that. But it didn't affect him at all! He was still singing [in sing-song voice] 'dance to yer daddy-oh, my little deario' in nineteen whatever-it-was! And he was still sending fellows out to [affects pronounced rural accent] 'cut me a butt of an ash-plant out there'!
He used to call his stick - which was a little piece of a roofing slat, y'know - he used to call it 'an slat driochta', which in Irish means 'the magic wand'!*
Keith: *The persuader!*
Eoghan: *And depending on how bold you were, you got either the flat of it - if you were lucky - or the side of it. The flat of it was two inches across, which was okay. The side of it was only a half an inch, which was rather nasty!
*There was another guy who was even worse. And this guy's name I will mention - he was called Brother Ultan - he's still going. He would hold your hand in his, like this [groups four fingers of left hand together, the forefinger and little finger on top and the two middle digits underneath, but with their tops exposed]. And he used to hit you with a tiny little switch about this long [18 inches approx.] and highly flexible. And he'd just go 'tsssh', like that, and he'd get you right across the tops of the four fingers. And you know the feeling you get? Like you had a hole in the top of each of your fingers!*
Keith Donald has been staring in open-mouthed fascinated horror at the author of this graphic description of some of the finer points of the southern Irish educational system. What d'ya reckon, Keith?
*Goodnight!*

No Regrets?
*The fish need the sea to survive
Just like your comrades need you
And the death squad can only get through to them
If first they can get through to you...*
- Jack Warshaw ('No Time For Love'
*It's a very general line, I think,* Declan Sinnott told Bill Graham during the course of Moving Hearts' last Hot Press interview. Bill did not agree, pointing out to the band that the *fish* and the *sea* mentioned in the song were symbols lifted from Chairman Mao's guidelines for guerrilla warfare, referring respectively to the freedom fighters and the population as a whole, on whom they depend for shelter and assistance. The song, Bill argued, could be interpreted as saying *shelter the gunmen*. Moving Hearts' confessed ignorance of the Mao connection could perhaps have left them open to charges of dilettantism - of dabbling in areas of which they didn't understand the full implications.
Do they therefore regret having used the line in the context?
Declan: *No, because the point Bill Graham was making was that we didn't know the rules of the politicos - we don't know how it all works. Well we don't know how it all works - we don't want to know. We're just looking at issues and we're saying something about them. And that's the end of it.*
Have Moving Hearts ever considered themselves, in retrospect, to have been wrong in their stance on any issue or in doing a particular song?
*Yes,* Sinnott declares, *we have been wrong. I think we were wrong in recording 'Landlord'. I think it's a bigoted statement now. It's too general. And also because of the way it was recorded. Jim Page's version has more humour to it, which somehow makes it more acceptable, whereas ours lacked humour. The words are pretty damning and not all landlords are like that.*
Ballad Of The Heart Departed
As soon as it had finally sunk in that their inimitably charismatic frontman was indeed leaving the ranks, Moving Hearts released a statement which contained the usual kind of terms: *amicable parting*, *personal reasons* etc. etc. But no amount of playing down could quite quell the shock waves. Christy Moore, from the very outset, had said that Moving Hearts was the band he had always wanted to front. So what, if anything, went wrong? Were there deeper reasons for his departure than the press releases were admitting? Was there perhaps a hint of his being dissatisfied with the progress or direction of the band?
Eoghan: *Absolutely no, is the answer to that. I wouldn't entertain any discussion on that subject. Christy was very happy with the way the band was going.*
Was there then an economic angle to his decision? It's no secret that with Moving Hearts' large full-time entourage and commitment to quality in their live gigs, they have often been hard pressed to keep their heads financially above water - not least because of the limitations of their present market.
Declan Sinnott totally refutes this suggestion: *Christy's reasons for leaving had got nothing to do with money - they were connected with loads of things. And you'd be better asking him than me, but I'll give you some of them that I know. One: he's not into travel and the band has to travel. Two: with Moving Hearts getting a song together takes so long. 'Hiroshima' took about six months of rehearsal - just one song. I mean we did other things during that six months as well. But if Christy gets a new song he wants to sing, all he's got to do is learn the words and the chords and he can sing it solo tonight. And the process bored him to a great extent. I mean, he gets a song that he wants to sing and he comes in and sings it. Then the band starts working on it and he goes home. And we could be working on it for three weeks, and when he comes back, we mightn't be finished.*
Eoghan: *There's also his home scene - he just doesn't like leaving home.*
Keith: *And also his wife is expecting twins - so that's going to be four kids under five.*
But still, hasn't it been stated that Moving Hearts was the band Christy always wanted?
Eoghan: *It still is. I mean that's obvious. The last two Wednesdays we've done the Baggot as Danny And The Valtones (the part-time extra-curricular splinter group of the Moving Hearts collective), Christy turned up both days for the sound check and wandered around looking confused for a while and left.
*I think we will do a gig together again,* he adds. *I think Moving Hearts Mark One may well perform again at some stage. When I say at some stage, I mean three or four years' time, when Christy has his family reared.*
But what, in the meantime, of Moving Hearts Mark Two? How does Mick Hanly feel about stepping into Christy Moore's shoes?
Mick: *Well, I wouldn't try to do that. I'm not trying to take Christy's place. I'm just playing with a bunch of guys, although I know people are going to make comparisons. In Ireland anyway, it's going to be a bit like that.*
So what difference is it going to make? Will there, for instance, be a sharp increase in the amount of original material featured by Moving Hearts?
Mick: I think there's been a lot of harping on this business of the material coming from within the band. The band has got to a certain stage on the material written by other people. I don't think it's hindered the band's progress, to be honest.*
Declan: *Y'see in one way - if you're talking about the business and what's good for the business in general - Moving Hearts is an outlet for other songwriters. Say Jim Page records his own song, he sells a certain amount of albums, but not half as much as Moving Hearts. It's an outlet - it's good for the business. And I wouldn't like that to dry up, I mean, Mick's songs - obviously we're going to do as many of them as we can do well and we're happy with, but that other outlet has to stay open, because it's very important.
*The most important consideration in Mick's joining the band, in fact, was Mick as a singer - not as a writer or as a guitar player, or for where he stood, so much as the fact that it would work, him singing in front of the band. Though the other things are important too, naturally.*
Both of Moving Hearts' albums to date have contained instrumental tracks. Is it possible that within the band there is a lobby which is more committed to this aspect and less to the political aspect of things?
Eoghan O'Neill denies this vehemently: *The whole band is committed to instrumental music, as well as to the songs. The reason that I write instrumentals is that I find it hard to write lyrics. It's a problem that musicians come up against. So if you can't write lyrics the only other way to express yourself is through instrumentals. And I think that's just as valid - it's certainly just as worthwhile.
*What you can do with instrumentals is you can portray moods - the way you feel. But you can't actually portray why you feel the way you feel. You feel depressed and you write something like 'Half Moon', which is a pretty sad piece of music. You can't say in the instrumental why you were depressed - all you can say is that you were. It's only on one level, which is why songs are always more successful, because you're communicating on more than one level.
*It's very hard to write a political instrumental!*

Unbeatable Hearts!
When it all comes down, Moving Hearts are more, much more, than the group of consummate musicians which was the aspect of the band most emphasised by the commentators when they began almost two years ago. They are as unique in their commitment, intensity and outspokenness as they are accomplished in their musicianship.
Moving Hearts stand for something, they react to the world around them, they refuse to remain silent in the face of the manifold injustices of the modern world. Even where I'm less than entirely convinced by the positions they adopt, they encourage me to face up to, challenge, and perhaps eventually come to terms with what I know, what I believe, and what I have been conditioned to think.
Even to their harshest critics that must be of crucial importance.