| Larry Schwartz |
| Paddy Moloney delights in recalling a day in the late ’80s. He was in Dublin when a fan approached him, begging for an autograph – and failing to realise that the man alongside Paddy was the celebrated Van Morrison. “It didn’t go down too well,” says Moloney, clearly relishing his upstaging of the dour Belfast-born singer-songwriter with whom he and his band, the Chieftains, were then recording Irish Heartbeat. They’re friends, he says, but it’s a “love-hate relationship”. He’s invariably asked if Morrison is as difficult as reputed. “Sure. Why not?” is his ready reply. “I mean, whatever makes the man tick, that’s great for me.” Moloney laughs about Morrison’s wary response when he approached him about performing with his band at the Grammy awards. “It would have been a great showcase,” he says. “You couldn’t do better. But did he think, ‘That Moloney, he’s up to something. He wants me to do something for him’.” They must have cut quite a contrast that day on Dublin’s Grafton Street; Morrison square and balding, Moloney an elfin figure with a full head of straight, greying hair. Moloney may not enjoy the celebrity of Morrison, but he’s a major figure, as responsible as anyone for the increasing popularity of Celtic music in recent years. It’s almost four decades since he co-founded the instrumental group the Chieftains, whose members, he rightly notes, are regarded as musicians’ musicians. He is one of the two original Chieftains still in the group, which bridges traditional and contemporary. Moloney’s passion for music and the high regard he receives in the industry have ensured a busy schedule outside the band. Recent projects have included helping the Corrs arrange a version of the Jimi Hendrix song, Little Wing. “My dear little friends,” he says of the group, who are among a clutch of artists featured on Tears Of Stone, a new album that showcases female vocalists. “They’re absolutely gorgeous and they’re the grandest family that you could ever come across.” The album was inspired by Moloney’s enthusiasm for the magnificent female vocalists who have emerged recently. Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Diana Krall, Loreena McKennitt, Sinead O’Connor, Sissell, the Rankins and the Japanese singer Akiko Yano are some whose work is on the album. One of four children of “an army man”, Moloney grew up in Donnycarney, Dublin. He delighted in the music he encountered during school holidays at his maternal grandparents’ home in central Ireland, where 50 or more dancers crammed into a farmer’s cottage would raise dust about a big, open fireplace. “I lived for that,” he says. “To go out for a few months’ holiday. There’s no electricity. No running water. There’s a well. But it all works. There was no disease and it was just magical. And the source of entertainment was music, stories and songs and playing cards and chasing women. It all went on, you know. It was just, to me, a heaven.” When Moloney first played professionally, there was concern in some quarters that traditional Irish music was dying. He has helped ensure it remains vigorous not just through albums but also through movies, creating movie scores for Tristan And Isolde, The Year Of The French, The Ballad Of The Irish Horse, Treasure Island and more. In fact, he’s been so busy with others’ projects that his band has been vying for his attention. “The big stick has been out from the band,” Moloney says. “No more. We want a Chieftains’ album. Not that we haven’t had one. We’ve made 28 traditional albums out of 35. There’s enough of them there.” The Chieftains’ last outing, an exploration of Galician music called Santiago, won a Grammy in 1997. They’ve collaborated with Canadian musicians on Fire In The Kitchen and players from the American south (Another Country). This year they’ll be touring Ireland to record a regional music album. “Everywhere you go you have a different way of playing a tune,” he says. You might think from the list of singers the Chieftains have worked with that everyone’s clamoring to play with them. Not so, says Moloney. “Nobody’s queueing up to record with the Chieftains. You have to pursue and pursue and work hard.” He’d approached Bonnie Raitt’s management, for instance. But it was only when he spoke to her after performing at the same concert that he was able to enlist her for the project. “I heard about your problem,” the blues singer said. “I’m the boss. I’ll record.” Her inclusion made it possible for Moloney to reinforce the notion of continuity through the ages. Raitt’s distinctive acoustic slide guitar on the second track brings a relatively contemporary sound after a 10th century metal-strung harp that accompanies a reading by Academy Award winning actress Brenda Fricker of W.B. Yeats’s Never Give All The Heart. Raitt sings a traditional song called A Storr Mo Chroi. “A lot of these are classical Irish songs,” Moloney says. “We’ve got thousands of them. Mostly in the Irish language. These are mostly translations. But they tell the stories of the problems we were having with our neighbors who came and forgot to go back.” Some of the lyrics reflect the dislocation for the women after the men had left to fight others’ wars on the battlefields of Europe. “And Bonnie actually cried when she sang that song.” Though he had intended to have contemporary singers interpret traditional songs, Joni Mitchell insisted on one of her own, Magadalene Laundries. It had taken Moloney 18 months to persuade her to participate. Though he didn’t think much of the song at first, he agreed. They’ve remained friendly. “I had lunch with Joni three weeks ago,” he says. “We saw the sun go down over California. She has no idea of time. She just lives. She’s a wonderful person. We went back to the house afterwards. She showed me all her paintings and signed a copy.” Joan Osborne, who visited him in Dublin last year with her mother, wept after singing Raglan Road, a song the Chieftains have previously recorded with Morrison and the Who’s Roger Daltrey. Natalie Merchant happened to be in town and Osborne also interested her in the album: Merchant sings a song called Lowlands Of Holland. The album closes with Danny Boy, a song so familiar Moloney once swore he’d never record it. Diana Krall gives it a languid, jazzy treatment with fiddle by Sean Keane and vocal accompaniment by New York’s Black Jubilee Choir. “To me, every track on the album was an event,” Moloney says. Moloney has a brass tin-whistle with worn red, plastic mouthpiece beside him. He’s had it for 27 years. He was just five years old when his mother bought him his first. “It’s a great instrument, very transportable. I’m glad I’m not playing the grand piano. It’s an instrument that you can make music on. You forget about the technicalities.” Moloney’s first instrument was a plastic tin whistle, which he learned to play from the Irish pipe master, Leo Rowsome. He worked for a time in the accounts department of a large building firm, but the music beckoned. He co-founded the Chieftains in 1963 and went to work for a fledgling record label, Claddagh, five years later. He’d supervise more than 40 albums of music and spoken word for Claddagh. He’s inundated with proposals. “I love what I’m doing. It’s a big challenge. There’s a lot of work. You say, God, I’m 60 years of age and I should be taking it easy. I should be slowing down a bit. But it’s getting worse. Or better. Whichever way you want to look at it.” His grandfather was a flute-maker. On a wet evening, an uncle would pace the kitchen with his bagpipes. “You’d be going off to bed and he’d be playing up and down,” Moloney says. “It used to put me to sleep. It didn’t drive you mad or anything.” Moloney’s uncle injured his leg. So he was in a wheelchair when a group of relatives flew to New York last March to watch the Chieftains perform at Carnegie Hall …”And there were tears.” He wants to be there when the family hears the new album. “I want to take it back to my aunts and uncles that are still alive and play it for them,” he says. “They don’t say much but they talk among themselves and I hear it back.” At home, they call him Pat Moloney and, from what he’s been told, they’re proud of him. The Sunday Age, 21-Feb-1999 |
Larry Schwartz Writer 