The Banagher Boy

Born in Banagher, Co. Offaly in 1945, Johnny McEvoy’s family moved to Dublin when he was six-years-old. His father was a bus driver, and there was no great musical tradition in his background. Certainly, nothing to indicate the hero worship and the music triumphs that were to come through a long and distinguished career.

As I wrote in the sleeve-notes for The Essential Johnny McEvoy collection in 2004, “The first time I saw Johnny McEvoy live on stage I was awestruck. I was an incurable Beatles fan and in the first flush of my lifelong fascination with Bob Dylan. And here, a few feet away on the stage at Liberty Hall in Dublin, was an Irish guy who was cooler, hipper and more musically vital than any Irish musician I’d thus far encountered.”
That was the week in 1966 that ‘Mursheen Durkin’ went to number one, to be followed in due course by ‘Boston Burglar’ and a trail of other hits. Now, McEvoy has recorded a fresh version of ‘Mursheen Durkin’ with Sharon Shannon and is due to be feted by an RTÉ documentary, and when we meet to reflect on his five decades as a musician near his home in Greystones he’s unfailingly polite and open, although you can’t help but feel that the depression that has dogged him for decades isn’t too far beneath the surface.

Jackie Hayden: How did the link-up with Sharon Shannon come about?
Johnny McEvoy: It was the idea of Darren Farrell, my manager. It seemed like a good follow-up for her ‘Galway Girl’, to resurrect ‘Mursheen Durkin’ and refresh it. I’d worked with Sharon at a festival in Boston and it was great she agreed to do it. We’re from different generations and musical backgrounds too. So it’s good to bridge those years and those differences. She had a free hand as to how to do it and she did a backing track first.
And how did it turn out?
When somebody first heard it they said it was reggae. I thought, “Oh God, how’s that going to work, me singing to a reggae track! At this stage in my life I don’t mind taking a chance, and I don’t have to prove anything, so I went to her studio in Athenry. I think she was quite nervous about the way she’d done it, but I sang it in one take, the way I’ve always sung it! I’m very excited about it. There’s some good riffs in it. We’ll probably do a few gigs together in the New Year.
How did the first recording of it come about?
You see, when I was in The Ramblers we’d made a mistake recording a single in London. At the time in Ireland you had to record in Eamon Andrews Studios, who controlled the commercial programmes on Radio Éireann. So we didn’t get played, although we got a lot of plays in the north! After The Ramblers had broken up I’d done a pantomime in The Gaiety and was playing around the folk clubs on my own. John Woods, who ran Pye, the biggest record company in the country then, told me to go into the studio and record a few tracks. I spent a lot of time going through all the songs I knew, and my mother heard me singing ‘Mursheen Durkin’ and suggested I try it. It got to number one and was still in the charts when the follow-up ‘Boston Burglar’ reached number one in March ’67.
To me you were an Irish link between Dylan and The Beatles with a George Best image.
Well, I cashed in on all that too. I could sing and play the guitar and use the harmonica harness, so it was natural to follow in Dylan’s footsteps. Jim Hand, the showband manager, used to refer to me as Liam Zimmerman, as a mix between Liam Clancy and Dylan!
Where did you fit into the showband culture?
The dance would start and maybe around 11 o’clock you might have a break for a guest for 45 minutes. It could be me or maybe a visiting country act like Johnny Cash or Hank Locklin or Marianne Faithfull. I’d get up, but with the screaming fans nobody heard me! I was getting the treatment The Beatles were getting, or The Rolling Stones!
How did that make you feel?
At first excited, but then frightened. It could be dangerous. They didn’t have the health and safety regulations you have now! You’d have a hall full of 2,000 screaming people all pushing up towards the stage and grabbing my clothes, tugging my boots, pulling the watch off my wrist and the shirt off my back. I could be locked in dressing rooms for my own safety and escorted out to the car. It got to the stage where I couldn’t walk down O’Connell Street or Grafton Street without being chased. It was difficult going into a pub or even the cinema.
Did it become a nuisance?
It did after a while. It was very exciting at the beginning. I was only 20 years of age!
Can you remember the first song you wrote?
I’d started buying records by The Clancy Brothers and Woody Guthrie, but often I’d buy records looking for songs to sing until I started writing myself. The first song I wrote in 1967 on a piece of envelope on a train from Birmingham to London to play in the Albert Hall. It was called ‘Reflections Take One’ and I recorded it for my first album. It was a bit zany and Dylanish. There was hardly anybody writing ballads at the time.
You later got yourself a country-ish band.
Yes, but I sort of regretted it afterwards as I felt I’d lost my individuality. It was necessary for economic reasons. Ironically, the ballad scene came back in the ‘70s with bands like The Dublin City Ramblers and I missed out on it. I was adding some of my own songs to my set, but some of them didn’t suit dancing at all. It was not a happy period in my life. I was away from what I liked doing. I didn’t want to be singing nothing but country music, although I avoided doing the Country 'n' Irish thing which I don’t like. It’s neither country nor Irish! It’s false.
Apart from Ireland and the UK, where else did
you play?
I toured American bases in Germany and played solo to guys who were heading off to get killed in Vietnam, guys drunk out of their heads. You’ve got to be tough for that audience. I played three clubs in a night, the NCOs, the officers and the enlisted men. The NCOs were the best. They had the intelligence to listen, I suppose. The officers were too stiff. The enlisted men didn’t want to be there. Acts could be eaten alive, but I survived. (laughs) I also played folk festivals around Europe and played the States too.
Do you think you could have done better internationally?
If I hadn’t got stuck in the band scene and had a manager with imagination I could have made something of myself in England and the States.
During the early folk success, had you a manager?
I did, yeah. Back then you had showband managers who had little imagination and could see no further than the road to Glenamaddy. To them, success abroad was playing the Galtymore in London. Why book you into Carnegie Hall when you could make as much money in Drumlish which doesn’t require any work on the manager’s part? All they had to do was answer the phone. Their minds stopped there, so anybody with the talent to make it abroad really had no chance. There was nobody of the calibre of Louis Walsh back then. One manager told me that his worst problem was finding a diary in October to fill in bookings for me that were coming in for the next year. My diary was usually full before the year began, so they thought you didn’t have to go anywhere else but around and around the same circuit. Even after my own song ‘Long Before Your Time’ went to number one for four weeks, a manager told me not to bother writing songs! But doing nothing but cover versions can get boring and it killed the showbands.
The documentary on RTÉ will cover your very long and successful career. Have you made a lot of money over the years? Were you ever ripped off by managers?
I was ripped off, loads of times, by everybody. I’ll put it this way. I made a lot of money, but I don’t have it. A lot of Irish artists were ripped off by record companies, promoters, ballroom owners. At the end of the night they’d want to give you less because they’d say it was a bad night. But how would I know what was coming in on the door? It was all cash.
Was there anything you could have done about it?
You could hardly object because they wouldn’t book you again. It was almost an acceptable practice. Everybody knew it was going on but you could do nothing. Our union, the Federation of Musicians, was totally ineffective.
Even so, weren’t you making more money than a guy working in a butcher’s shop?
Ah yeah. But they took advantage of that principle. Sure isn’t he making enough as it is anyway?
And was that widespread?
They weren’t all like that, but it was rampant. I’d say nearly every band in the country was ripped off.
Has that stopped?
The artists coming up now are far more astute. At the height of it I was 20 years of age. I didn’t have a cheque book! I didn’t know anything about having a bank account. I had gold and platinum records at the time, but my record royalties would be written on a foolscap piece of paper and slid across the table to me. I’d no way of checking and it was never very much. Eamonn Campbell of The Dubliners told me I was being ripped off. He told me to join the PRS in England and MCPS and get my songs registered. Since then I’ve had a fairer deal, especially since IMRO came in.
So what are you doing these days?
I’m back basically on my own doing mainly concerts in theatres, with Darren Farrell playing guitar with me. I’m back singing the songs I love, including many of my own songs as well as old ballads. I’m writing songs, and as a labour of love I’ve recorded nearly 20 songs that haven’t been heard before. I do festivals in America and elsewhere too.
You also have the RTÉ TV documentary and a new DVD and CD coming out?
It’s mainly looking back over my musical life. It’s also about me as a person, and I hope it’s not too depressing.
Will it cover your bouts of depression?
I touch on my own experience of depression which affected me in a big way, but that also helped me create. It’s bi-polar and genetic, a chemical disorder in the brain. There’s nothing I can do but take medication. It comes and goes. I can talk about it but that won’t cure it!
What else is in the documentary?
It uses a lot of archive footage and some songs from a concert I recorded in Cork. I wanted it to be honest and to explain what it was really like, talking about the matters we’ve just been talking about.

The documentary The Johnny McEvoy Story goes out on RTÉ1 at 8.30pm on October 29. His DVD and CD with the same title will be available from Dolphin.