By Steve Bergsman
Irish songstress Mary Black entered the hotel from a side door, but it wasn't to hide from fans. It was raining and that was the closest to her car. Her lush, dark locks were shorter than the iconic photos of her from her best-selling albums of the 1980s and 1990s. She was still as beautiful as the way I remembered her voice.
My wife and I were having dinner with Black and her husband, record producer Joe O'Reilly, so we could talk about Dublin, a city that has produced an outsized number of international recording stars. There is even an Irish rock 'n' roll museum - the starting point for any walking tour of the city's pop-music history.
Irish singers of international renown tend to fall into the folk category - like The Chieftains and The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem or outright rockers such as U2, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy. Then there are singers whose voices are so ethereal they are in categories of their own like Enya and Mary Black.
The latter grew up in Dublin and recalls hanging out at the city's coffee shops listening to the folk-rock music that was popular in the early 1970s. She was so confident of her voice that when Linda Ronstadt visited a local club she sang alongside her.
In 1989 Black released the album "No Frontiers," which not only reached the top of the Irish album charts but stayed in the Top 30 for more than a year.
When it comes to musical history, some people might say the high point for Ireland came in 1742, when George Frideric Handel first performed his "Messiah" oratorio in Dublin. Others might say the apex came when the Irish band U2 entered Dublin's Windmill Lane Studio in 1982 to record the "War" album and their first major single, "New Year's Day."
So what is in the Irish waters that makes it such a great breeding ground for singers?
"I blame our history," Black said. "We had 800 years of oppression and a famine. We came through so much and music kept us strong. When we had nothing else, we could sing and play tunes. It kept people's spirits high. The tunes were cherished and passed down from generation to generation."
They say you can walk into any pub in Ireland and hear someone playing what an outsider might call Irish folk music. That's a bit of an exaggeration. In the first few pubs I visited in Dublin and Galway there was no music. In Galway, a local recommended a nondescript pub near to my hotel in the town center. My wife and I walked in and ordered up some Guinness. After about 15 minutes a singer took over a small nook at the front of pub. Here it is, I was thinking, a taste of Irish music. But, it wasn't. The singer belted oldies from any American radio playlist.
Then as we were walking back to our hotel we heard the dulcet tones of the fiddle and the flute floating out a pub door. We walked in and finally a group of local musicians were playing those sweet, classic Irish tunes for which we yearned.
The Irish take their music seriously. There is even a statue in Dublin of Molly Malone, the sad heroine of the famous folk song that we in the United States refer to as "Cockles and Mussels" but is actually titled "Molly Malone":
In Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty / I once met a girl named Molly Malone / and she wheeled her wheelbarrow / through streets broad and narrow / singing cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh."
If you misplaced that song in your memory bank, check out The Dubliners' version on the Internet.
There are other statues to musicians along Dublin streets dedicated to rock 'n' rollers Rory Gallagher and Phil Lynott. The names may not be familiar to Americans, but Gallagher and Lynott were the first Irish rockers of international renown. Gallagher was a guitarist praised by Jimi Hendricks, no less. There is a full statue of him in his hometown of Ballyshannon, and in Dublin look for a bronze replica of his Stratocaster mounted 15 feet above Essex Street East.
Lynott's statue can be found on Harry Street. He gets the recognition because he was the frontman for a band called Thin Lizzy ("Jailbreak," "The Boys Are Back in Town") that was the first Irish rock 'n' roll band to hit internationally.
The best way to get a sense of the passion Ireland holds for its musicians is to visit the Irish Rock 'n' Roll Museum in the Temple Bar section of Dublin.
When my wife and I arrived at the music menagerie we were surprised to see a queue of young girls gathered. The Irish Rock 'n' Roll Museum is much more than an exhibition hall; it is also a series of recording studios and a performance venue called The Button Factory (the original building housed a button factory). Appearing that night was a young singer named Jacob Whitesides. He was unknown to my wife and me but obviously not to the14-year-old girls.
The studios are the busiest in Ireland, and everyone from Snow Patrol to Sinead O'Connor has recorded there. Members of U2 still drop by every now and then. Even Michael Jackson has visited. There is a U2 rehearsal room with plenty of memorabilia. Glen Hansard with his band, The Frames, recorded his first album here and then revisited the same studio when filming his movie, "Once," which won an Academy Award for the best song.
However, the museum is most proud of its Gallagher and Lynott memorabilia, including the guitars that made them famous.
The layout of the Irish Rock 'n' Roll Museum is kind of a Spinal Tap shambles, with studios and rehearsal and exhibitions in different buildings and different floors, which is why you really need a tour guide to go through.
WHEN YOU GO
If Bruce Springsteen liked it, you can't go wrong. The upscale Merrion Hotel (www.merrionhotel.com) is in walking to distance to Trinity College and Grafton Street shopping. The Gresham (www.gresham-hotels-dublin.com), where everyone from Abba to the Beatles has stayed, is on the north side of River Liffey and near to Henry Street shopping. The hotel got a little tired, but it was recently purchased by RIU Hotels, redubbed Hotel RIU Plaza the Gresham and is looking spiffy again.
The Irish Rock 'n' Roll Museum: www.irishrocknrollmuseum.com
The Button Factory: www.buttonfactory
Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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