This Is The Story

To an outsider the social division between the North and South sides of Dublin is so pronounced that at first you feel as if there must be some unwritten system of apartheid of which everyone who lives in the city is aware, but which has somehow been kept a secret from the outside world. What other possible explanation could there be for the fact that when you cross O Connell Bridge into Grafton Street, it s like stepping across an invisible border into another, more affluent world?
To those who have followed Aslan s career from the beginning, their achievement in reaching the No. 1 spot with their debut album Feel No Shame seems a triumph of endurance. Their past struggles have always been connected with the fact that they are a Northside band

In the flesh Christy Dignam is tiny. He looks tired, a bit wasted. He has the sort of natural charm that breaks teenage hearts at fifty paces. He talks at the rate of knots. We begin with the Book of the Name and the great North/South divide.
"Aslan was a character in the Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe but that wasn t all that was important at the time," Christy explains. "The main reason we picked it was that a lot of groups at the time had long names that were being abbreviated like OMD, and things like that. I hated that, so we just picked one word that couldn t be changed. Then people just picked up on it and started talking about the roar of the lions and stuff like that. That was fairly embarrassing for us, we weren t really into it."
Is the fact that the band are from the Northside really important?
"The press picked up on that too. but there is a big North South thing in Dublin. People from the Southside tend to deny it s there, but people from the Northside tend to be more aware of it.
"It affects you in subtle ways. Like if you live on the Southside you tend to drink in the right pubs, where you have a higher profile with people who matter. I mean, we could swan around the pubs on the Northside for the rest of our lives and never meet somebody from RTE, but if you go into the Bailey or the Pink Elephant, you re going to meet these people. One of the things that got us the deal was that we did an Evening Extra thing with Billy Magra. One night we happened to be in the Pink Elephant after a gig and we met him and he said we could do it. After that we hounded him, and I think it was out of embarrassment that he gave us the show in the end. But that helped us. It helped our profile and it enabled us to do country gigs and get money together to do singles and demos and get the deal."
What about the other angle that's been widely touted, of Aslan as working class boys from the most deprived area of Dublin ,. as their EMI press release put it?
"When we started off in music, we couldn t like I could never pretend to be an Oscar Wilde type character. We hadn t that intellectual quality in the band. We couldn t contrive anything, so we decided that we would just be as we were. And that sincerity sort of endeared people to the band. But then they started saying that it s the working-class angle, and we don t particularly want that.
"I think that the album we have made is as good as any debut album that has ever come out of this country and that s not because we re from the Northside or the Southside, it s because we re musicians.
"At the same time, obviously, your background has a bearing on what you write and the way you write it and sometimes you feel bitter. But the anger I grew up with, about not being as well off as I could have been, is gone now, because it s a futile thing."
The issue is still causing controversy however. The most recent example was an interview in the NME in which Christy accused Bono of claiming to be a working class hero when he comes from a middle-class estate on the Northside. It was picked up by the tabloids who then ran a "Young Guns Aslan Slam U2" story.
"I don t really want to talk about it," says Christy. "But at the risk of it sounding like a cop-out I can honestly say that it was taken completely out of context. I hope that if U2 read this they ll realise about any Irish band, the first fuckin thing you re asked about in an interview is U2. What connection have you to U2? What do you know about U2? What skeletons have they got in the cupboard? And you get really sick of it.
"So we had had about a two and a half hour interview with this guy. He tried to get us to talk about U2 during it, but we blacked it as a subject. Then the next day when we were driving him to the airport I was showing him the flat Tony lives in in Ballymun flats, and then I took him down and showed him the house Bono used to live in. He took down those few sentences and based the whole thing around them and forgot about the two and a half hour interview we had done the previous day."
While that seems to confirm that Aslan weren t trying to make capital out of such comparisons, Christy now adopts a different attitude to Bono and the band.
"There are things Bono has said that I don t agree with, y know about different issues but there are things that the Pope has said that I don t agree with. That s neither here nor there. On a musical level I think the band are one of the freshest things to come out of the world over the past ten years not just out of Ireland. And I also realise the help that the focus U2 have put on Ireland has been. In a way it s a stepping stone to get you off the ground but in another it s a disadvantage because of the bullshit you have to go through after that. U2 are the biggest rock band in the world and in a way it puts a lot of pressure on bands like us y know?"
The U2 episode is not the first time Christy Dignam s opinions have got him into trouble. There was, you may remember, a little incident a while back involving Chris de Burgh and a recent appearance on Night Train with Mark Cagney has also caused considerable controversy. Certainly, Christy Dignam is nothing if not voluble and will talk at length about virtually anything. Like politics
"There s never been a political party in this country that inspired me or made me thing Fair play, you re doing the right thing . Not a successful party anyway," he reflects. "the people at the grassroots level might be genuine and believe in everything they re doing, but there are so many compromises to be made before you become a successful politician that by the time you do become successful, it doesn t matter because you ve had to compromise so much that you re almost the same. You might be wearing a different colour suit, but you re basically the same as Garrett FitzGerald or Charlie Haughey."
Dignam is similarly critical of the police and their attitude to drug abuse.
"Politicians in this country get away with so much! And the policing is the same. There are things that happen in this country that would never be allowed to happen anywhere else. Like the Concerned Parents Against Drugs thing. Now while I agree with what they are trying to achieve and I know they re genuine, I disagree with their methods, and I can t understand how the police can let lynch mobs go around and throw people out of their houses. Because a lot of people who are dealing drugs in this city are junkies themselves and they have families.
"I have friends who have grown up in situations where there was no hope for them in this world. They ll never get jobs, or maybe they could get really bad menial jobs. Like I just met a fella I know this morning and he s going to the Meat Packers in Ballymun, or he s going to the B&I boats, y know? And they re two fuckin pretty dreadful jobs. Years ago people were ignorant and they weren t educated and they hadn t got televisions and things. But now people are looking at Dallas and Dynasty or whatever, and I know that this sounds a bit strange, but they re seeing these things on television and they re seeing that it s a totally alien world to them and they re saying Fuck this! Why should I live in this slum? And they think, well, nobody s helping me out so I m going to grab what I can. That s why you get people dealing drugs and robbing Post Offices. They re usually people from working class areas. Coz they have nothing else to go for. some of them just don t give a fuck if they re caught because it s either a life of hell in prison or a life of hell out of prison. And they don t care!
"So the government s attitude to drugs is a big cop-out. When they re screaming on Today Tonight about the drugs situation in this country, people in Finglas have to live and people in Ballymun have to live in absolute squalor. Not just partial squalor, absolute squalor. The Concerned Parents do get results, but I don t think the methods they use should be allowed in a civilised country. We have a police force, we have people who are paid to do those fuckin jobs and they should do them!"
So what s his perspective on religion?
"I have no time for it. It s torn this country in two. If you look back through religions, usually they re just used to keep people in check so society can get on and some people can get on and make loads of money and other people can get on and starve.
"You know yourself if you re hurting people or you re not hurting people. Take my father. He hates the clergy. He got married when he was twenty-one, had eight kids, and he s worked every day of his life. He doesn t drink, doesn t smoke and his one vice is that he likes to go greyhound racing. This is a man that has nothing but goodness in him. He s never done anybody any harm, he has no malice in him at all. But will be go to hell coz he missed Mass every Sunday for his whole life? No. It s wrong. That s where religion is just out the window."
But apart from being vociferous, where exactly is Christy Dignam at?
"I want to be able to sing to people and I want them to appreciate that I can sing, first of all, and I want to be saying something in my songs. All the songs we have written up to now have been a cry from where we come from. We ve been saying This is how we live and it s not fuckin nice! Right? A lot of the songs are about that. We do have songs like Loving Me Lately that are just sex songs. Everybody has songs like that, but I m screaming at the top of me voice at the moment I m Christopher Dignam and I was born in Ireland, in Dublin, in a working class area and this is what I am and this is how we live, and it s not right , y know? I just want people to hear me saying that. Whether they care or not is neither here nor there I want them to know that I ve said it."

If one quarter of what we hear about them is true, Aslan are boys who like a good time. They have eh embraced the rock n roll lifestyle to the full . They have a devoted teenage female following and screaming and knicker-throwing are par for the course at gigs.
"That s just part of the game," laughs Christy. "It s just the way rock n roll is, y know? I love all that. I m mad into it. Everything I ever tried in life that I enjoyed was always bad for you, bar sex. It was either expensive or bad for you, or expensive and bad for you. And sex isn t."
Does he see himself as a sex symbol?
"Nah. Not at all."
I ve yet to meet anyone who admitted being a sex symbol! "It s just that a lot of people at some stage in their lives have sat in front of a mirror with a hairbrush or something and been a rock star. So when people see you on stage, you re living their dreams for them. When I m on stage in the Olympic or somewhere they look up and see the lights, and maybe they have a few drinks on them and they re not totally together, and they see you as somebody who just wakes up at five to eight, jumps on a stage at eight o clock and goes to sleep again at nine o'clock!. Or maybe parties all night and then goes to sleep. They don t see that you wake up with a pain in your arse somedays and you don t want to do a gig maybe you re having problems with bread at home coz you re getting a mortgage bill or something. They don t see all that. They just see this totally pure figure up on a stage and that makes them throw away their inhibitions and for the hour and a half that you re on stage they go into a frenzy.
"That s all I ever really wanted to do with music to be on a stage and to get that sort of return. The best feeling that I ever get in my life is when you walk off the stage and into the dressing room and the crowd are still clapping and you can hear the cheers. Nothing will ever give the buzz that that gives you.
"And a lot of our crowd, probably because of what we say in our songs are working class people, and if we can take their minds off their everyday lives for an hour and a half and forget about everything and enjoy themselves that, to me, is what it s all about."
Do they get "hassle" from groupies?
"I wouldn t call it hassle, (laughs). Yeah, we do get a few people coming up to us after gigs and that. But being on the road now, it s not the way it used to be. You have the whole handgrenaids scene and that s fucked up a lot of people s heads as regards sex! So now, because you re in a band they think you re fucking every night, y know? So they won t come near you coz they re afraid of AIDS.
"Well some of em. We ve had our fair share. We ve got ten people on the road five band members plus crew. Ten men on the road going around together and they re living in each other s pockets and although there s a certain amount of friendship within the band, there s a warmth a woman gives that you can t get off a fella unless of course you re gay. And none of the band are gay. so that leaves us with a problem (laughs). Your heart bleeds! No, but you do have moments of weakness where you get a girl coming up and just for the company of it I mean I m beyond the point now where I ll sleep with a woman just for the sake of running back to me mates and saying Oh yeah, I slept with a woman last night and we were swinging from the chandeliers.
"But if we are with women like any women that the band are with, we usually let them know the situation. We never let them believe that it s anything other than what it is a bit of fun for one night. We d never say Oh I feel like marrying you, so let s sleep together and we ll talk about the wedding plans tomorrow and shit like that. So we do have a fairly mature approach to it.
"We never treat women in a sexist way, and if anyone is seen treating a woman like that within the band, they ll be pulled up over it."
What about his wife? How does she feel about it?
(laughs) "I didn t say I was talking about me! I m talking about the rest of the band. (laughs) I wasn t talking about me!"
But how does she feel about his being involved in rock n roll?
"Well obviously I don t think she s very comfortable with the fact that the job I m in focuses women s attention on me. I don t think she s mad about the idea. But I started going out with my wife when I was thirteen or fourteen, so we were childhood sweethearts who grew up together and kinda graduated into a marriage as opposed to meeting her one day and falling in love. I ve never gone out with a girl in e way that a fella would go out with a girl and meet her under Clery s clock or whatever. I ve never done any of that coz I ve been going with her constantly over those years. So she knows the story. She knows what I wanted and she s got a hairdresser s, she s got her own business. So she s got a life of her own and a career of her own. The way we look at it is, we sit down every so often and say, Okay, let s look at what we achieved in the last month, or whatever And like everything I do financially in the band is for them, my wife and child. But y know, I m still a man! I m still a boy!"
Suppose the situation was reversed though, and she had men crowding around and giving her attention, how would he react?
"Well, if it happened overnight, obviously it would have an impact on me, but if it was a gradual thing the way it has been for her, I don t think it would. She s a person like and to be honest, I m quite flattered when other men fancy her. Like, there are occasions when we might be at the same lig and she s getting attention and I don t mind. I m quite flattered and it s good for her as well. If I thought she was sleeping around I d be upset, but I ve said to her on occasion that she can do what she likes as long as I don t know about it! I think if she knew I was sleeping with other women she d kick me out! So that s why I don t do it! (laughs) I m just a bragger it s all lies!"
What would you say to allegations that Aslan are just another macho band?
"Well it is boys music as opposed to girls music. Coz we grew up in a way that if someone clattered you in the face, you d hit them back, y know? We didn t negotiate it, we just knocked the bollocks out of each other. So obviously that influence is still there. We do things that we re not going to be ashamed of when we go down to the Cardiff Inn next week. But I think if this album establishes the band as a credible musical force, we ll be confident enough in our musicianship to be able to wimp out and branch out into different areas. We ve already done some demos for the next album and I know it s going to be a lot tamer.
"But there aren t any lyrics on this one that are sexist. And in general I think the band don t see women in the way that a lot of Irish men see women.
"Like I have a sister who s gay, right? And I never used to think that I was sexist, and like if I went over to her place for dinner I d be absolutely trying not to be sexist, but still they d be pulling me up all the time about it. And then I realised it wasn t me being sexist, it was the stereotyping I grew up with. And that was more sinister to me than someone sitting in a pub saying Oh, mots should see to things like cleaning the floor and the kitchen sink . That s blatant sexism, but the subtle sexism I had freaked the shit out of me."

On the cover of Feel No Shame, Christy posed with his baby daughter Kiera. It s a shot which is more than slightly reminiscent of, cough, the sleeve of a certain album by another Dublin Northside band.
"There was a couple of reasons why we picked it. One is that we said, Boy , so we ll do that!" he laughs.
"No, seriously, we d had a number of meetings with Steve Averill and we told him the name of the album. Now the music we do is strange insofar as it s not Echo And The Bunnymen, and it s not The Cure, right? It s not Bon Jovi and it s not U2 and it s not like any of the what I call these arty, progressive bands. We came out and we wanted to play rock n roll and that s what we play. And that s a very untrendy thing to do. So when we were writing the album, we just wrote it and we said y know, this is not the most innovative album ever written and we re going to get stick over this, that and the other, but I don t give a fuck, I feel we ve made a great album. And that's what the whole Feel No Shame thing was.
"So we wanted to make that into a visual. We were thinking of having a few different photographs. One idea was to have a terrace of houses and have the first one done up really nice and getting worse as it went down until the last one was a really fuckin slummy house, and maybe having a black kid or a Chinese kid outside the really nice house and a white kid outside the slummy one, to get that idea of opposites. But then that seemed a little tacky and patronising, so we went back to the Irish father thing. An Irish father isn t supposed to have any responsibility for the kids he s supposed to just kick them over to the wife. So it ended up with just me and my daughter.
"And the minute I saw the proofs of the cover I knew that we were going to get a load of grief over this, and people are going to say Ah! Boy! But I say, Ah, but it s not, it s a girl! Besides, there isn t a syllable or a note on that album that has any similarity to U2 so it doesn t bother me at all. Fuck the begrudgers, we don t care."
The band are currently playing a series of dates in Britain. They ll be leaving for Europe in April and will spend the summer travelling through the States, living on a tour bus
What s so special about Aslan, Christy? Why should we care?
"Because we re not trying to be something we re not."
Ah men.