Music
22 Nov 10

Paying 'Lips Service

As they prepare to do folk-rock battle again, JIM LOCKHART tells Colm O’Hare about the instruments and technology that make HORSLIPS tick.

Without a doubt, the homegrown live event of 2009 was the return of the mighty Horslips to the live stage after almost 30-years off the road. The Belfast and Dublin were a resounding triumph and, if anything, they sounded even better than they did in their heyday. The rapturous reception given to the band by fans, old and new, proved that reunions can be much more than exercises in nostalgia. Thankfully, this was no one-off and the ‘Lips are back on the road once again for a handful of gigs in the run up to Christmas, including a return to Dublin’s 02 Arena. For Jim Lockhart – keyboard (and flute) player with the group since they formed in the early 1970s the reunion was both timely and hugely satisfying.

“Last year was strangely strange but oddly normal, as the song goes,” he muses, as they head back into the rehearsal studio to fine-tune their set for the upcoming gigs. “While it’s true that it had been a long time since we played, especially on such a big stage, we got it together without too much grief in the end. I think we all discovered that once you start playing, a lot of muscle memory returns and things just fall into place.”
The Horslips back catalogue ranges in musical style from more traditionally inspired pieces to full-on, frantically paced rockers. Were there any numbers in particular that proved harder to revisit than others?
“The well-known stuff like ‘Dearg Doom’ and ‘Trouble With a Capital T’ were straightforward enough and relatively easy to do again. But something like the Book Of Invasions sequence, which involves Charles [O’Connor] swinging from mandolin to concertina and for me, playing a combination of flutes and various keyboards was a different story. It was a bit of a challenge to put it back together. The thing with Horslips is, we often did complex arrangements and a lot of our stuff is sort of counterintuitive. And because there were trad tunes built through a lot of the material, in a lot of cases that would dictate what was happening to the harmonic structure and the chord sequence. We rehearsed quite a bit and did some live stuff in Drogheda and the odd TV thing and that helped a lot.”
He explains that during rehearsals they would often concentrate on nailing certain numbers before moving onto the next one to be tackled.
“It would happen with different songs on different days. There are always those moments when it all seems to gel together. There was one day in particular I remember when we finished playing a set and we all put down our instruments, stood back and said ‘wow’. We all felt we had turned some kind of corner and I suppose that gave us more confidence.”
Technology has changed dramatically since the early Horslips days – did they embrace a more modern approach to playing live this time around?
“We did and we didn’t,” he reflects. “It was a question of how much would we reconstruct what we used to do and would we do it in the same way we did it back then? Everyone was playing differently to the way they used to play and we had to take that into account.
“Charles got a load of new kit for the electric fiddle and electric mandolin; he spent a lot of time working on that. Johnny [Fean] was playing his trusty old Les Paul Junior last year but for these gigs, he’s got a new Les Paul which I know he’s thrilled with. Ray [Fean, drummer] plays a Pearl kit, Barry was playing a Dan Armstrong bass. In the early days he was playing either a Fender Jazz or a Precision, I’m not sure which. The famous shamrock bass was absent - the last time I saw it was in a guitar exhibition in Collins Barracks. It was a great showpiece but it weighed a ton and would probably give Barry curvature of the spine if he used it for a full gig!”
From a keyboards point of view Lockhart uses several onstage including a Roland Fantom and a standard Yamaha as well as a Nord keyboard.
“The Nord has a nice analogue piano sound but for the Hammond sound I went back to a vintage Hammond played through a pair of Leslie cabs. No sampler can recreate the Hammond sound like the real thing. It’s just a beautiful beast – and it’s lovely to watch and to listen to. There’s lovely warm growl to it.”
When it came to PA and lighting, Lockhart says they kept it “kind of retro” which he says worked well.
“We had the opportunity of using in-ear monitors but we stuck to the good old fashioned wedges - it’s more rock and roll that way. John Willis from Belfast did the PA and he was great – he had never mixed the band before apart from on some of the warm-up gigs. There’s a lot going on - you’ve three lead vocals with Johnny, Charles and Barry and sometimes you’ll have harmonies going on as well.”
Presumably then, Horslips 2010 is a well-oiled, five-man music machine ready for action?
“Well we wouldn’t want to be too complacent about things,” Lockhart proffers. “After all it has been a year since we did the last gig, which is a long time in politics so there’ll be the odd butterfly when the dates get closer. Being in a band involves the usual taking care of business, making sure the contracts are sorted and the transport is organised. But that’s all peripheral stuff and the whole raison d’être for us is to get out there playing in front of audiences and we’re all really looking forward to doing it once again.”