That's Life – Marty Whelan's Memoir: A Life through Music

INTRODUCTION

It never occurred to me that one day I would be asked to pen my memoirs; the idea that my story is in any way significantly different than that of others of my background just never crossed my mind. But as the years passed, and I found myself in unusual situations, I would think to myself, ‘how lucky am I?’ In fact, how different my life might have been. Then, in the space of a couple of years I was asked three times to think about the possibility of writing a book. Flattered though I was, I delayed the decision for a few reasons. First, I wasn’t really ready to go down that road. Then, was there enough to tell?

Well, Nicki Howard from Gill & Macmillan thought so and convinced me to undertake the project. It’s been an interesting journey down memory lane for me, recalling happy, sad, trying and successful events in my life. This is all me, from the heart. I sat at my desk putting down my memories onto each page. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

That’s it … That’s life. My life.

‘Dancing in the Dark’

Bruce Springsteen



Leaving my parents’ house on the morning of 13 August 1985 felt like a monumental affair. I’d called that house home for all of my 29 years, so not being able to do so ever again was an odd sensation somehow. In my trendy black suit, grey waistcoat, bow tie and shiny shoes, I was the picture of manly elegance. (Actually, I still have the trousers, not out of any foolish belief that they might actually fit me, so heaven knows why; in fact, they’ll never have contact with my legs again!) This was my wedding day and I was leaving my mum and dad for the last time. I was finally growing up, marrying my childhood sweetheart, Maria, the girl I’d met at a dance in Clontarf in the heady days of 1974.

Monumental indeed, but it had been that kind of year, 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev had become General Secretary of the Communist Party in March, a hole in the ozone layer was discovered in May, and July brought Live Aid and the chance for Phil Collins to play two concerts on either side of the Atlantic on the same day, thanks to Concorde. All of this, of course, paling into insignificance in August when I stepped down the aisle with the girl of my dreams. What was it Gilbert O’Sullivan wrote in his song ‘Matrimony’? ‘Marriage, the joining together of two people, for better or for worse. Till death them do part. Olé!’ But I’ll come back to that later.

In fact, marrying Maria was the second momentous event of 1985 for me. The first happened on 1 June that year when The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, came to Slane. He had never played to such a capacity crowd; some would later say it was over 100,000 fans, and Maria and I were lucky enough to be among them. He became a global superstar on that evening in June by the banks of the Boyne. As the opening strains of ‘Born in the USA’ played and the band marched forward like conquering heroes, we all knew we were witnessing something special in music history. Later on, a friend and I, ably helped along by copious amounts of refreshments from the backstage bar, decided to see if we could purloin (take without paying for, remove discreetly, okay, steal!) a souvenir of the day. We were duly spotted by the girders behind the stage holding a small table flower arrangement, which we’d ‘lifted’ from backstage. Words were superfluous and, quite frankly, I can’t recall what we said by way of explanation. I’m absolutely sure, though, even we wouldn’t have understood our own words at that time and we were sent off with a flea in our respective ears. Funny thing is, we then spotted a chair that Bruce might have sat on earlier on: explain the carrying of that through the bushes of Slane to a burly bouncer, will you? Ah, the things we did, or nearly did in this case. I would love to divulge the name of the individual who accompanied me on this Springsteen episode but alas and alack, as Spike Milligan once said, I am taken agad. It wouldn’t be right to impugn the unsullied-until-now reputation of a senior member of RTÉ management. However, should the opportunity arise and I need to use this in some way to further my career prospects, I will of course hold back, because that is not the sort of fellow I am.

Ah, yes, but where was I now? Getting married … I suppose the most unusual thing about getting married, for me at least, was the fact that I had never been married before. You might say to yourself, Is that a problem? After all, if you’ve never been married before and all seems well with those around you who are, then why should you feel any sense of concern? And the good news is, I didn’t; it was just that it was all going to be quite new to me. Maria and I had never lived away from home, me as an only child, Maria with her folks and five siblings. We had never moved out into a flat or that sort of mad studenty thing. We’d been with students over the years and had the fun and we had some sense of what it’s like not to live at home. All that, ‘Who bought the milk?’ All that, ‘What do you mean, we’ve no bread?’ All that, ‘Don’t tell me you want to play Leonard Cohen again?’ No, we had had the sedate joy that is living with the mammy and the daddy and the fact that no matter what happened, there would always be bread, milk and, quite frankly, if you wanted to play Mickey Cohen, no one would have batted an eyelid. And yet it felt right and it was right.

Meantime, back to the getting married bit, it really is quite the day, isn’t it? Quite apart from the newness of leaving home, for me it was all about organisation; about making sure that everything from your end is as it supposed to be, but from the bride’s point of view, it was a completely different situation. For her it was all about making sure everything was absolutely perfect, and I mean perfect! I suppose for me, the event itself brought its own issues. For a start, as an only child, as I am, you don’t automatically have a best man; you’ve got to find one. Now, I was lucky I had friends in abundance and any number of fine capable young lads would do the job just perfectly. I had the good fortune to ask one of my longest-standing friends. God bless you, Robbie Irwin.

Actually it’s funny, but Robbie and I met in Seal Records, on Marlborough Street, just around the corner from Dolphin Discs, back in the mid-seventies. I think the place where Stan used to supply all the aspiring DJs with the latest waxings is now a phone shop and Seal Records has turned into some sort of restaurant. Robbie and I became firm friends and worked together for over 15 years. He is a well-known sports broadcaster in RTÉ, you know, and one of the finest fellows it’s ever been my pleasure to know. So we had Robbie as best man, Willie Kavanagh as groomsman and we were all set with the shiny shoes and the best bib and tucker. Maria had her sister Karen as her bridesmaid and her sister-in-law Marguerite as maid of honour. Quite the little troupe.

The diminutive actor Mickey Rooney, married eight times and therefore somewhat of an expert, once said, ‘Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted a whole day.’ Then there was the other great line, not from Mickey Rooney: ‘My wife and I were happy for 20 years, then we met.’ But none of this was the case, nor would prove to be the case. We had a most marvellous day: the sun shone, the music played, love was in the air and my wife was radiant. Happy, happy day.

We had our reception in a wonderful location, the Beaufield Mews, a restaurant in Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, which was originally a coach house and stables, but which now housed antiques upstairs, with a fine restaurant downstairs and its own lush garden with flowers in abundance. We enjoyed fine food and wine and were surrounded by family and friends. Funny, as I tell you this, I can still see my parents, Lily and Sean, and Maria’s parents, Kathleen and Tom, now all gone, getting on so well and thoroughly enjoying the day. It was very unusual in those days to be able to have the run of the place, which made it particularly special. Another thing that was special about the day was the fact that Maria, the bride, decided to speak and welcome everyone, and, much to my alarm, told the assembled multitude that our home was to be an open house for family and friends from now on … she wasn’t wrong there.

Because Mrs Whelan (newly crowned) and I had travelled a little bit by then, thanks to her job as an air hostess in Aer Lingus, we decided the menu should perhaps offer something a little out of the ordinary. So the culinary genius at the venue agreed to oblige and we served up veal as a main course. It was lovely, it really was, and everybody seemed to enjoy it tremendously. Of course this gave best man Robbie the opportunity to thank us for the lovely bit of fish! So now you can see the sort of tone that was being set.*

We had our old friend Vincent Hanley, God bless him, and our best girlfriend Pauline doing the entire Aer Lingus pre-take-off safety drill as an impromptu entertainment. Vincent really would have been such a good steward. I also feel it necessary to make note of other guests at our wedding: my old pal, Ireland’s resident singing Argentinian, Chris de Burgh and his lady in red, Diane, along with her babe in arms, Rosanna. Now hang on a second here, I realise that is all very fine for the hoi polloi to be able to say things about how marvellous their social circle is, but how many among us can say that he had Miss World at his wedding? Say what you will, it happened to us. The mad thing is, years later, when I was compère of the Miss Ireland pageant (one way or another I’ve been everywhere) it was I who announced on the stage that Rosanna Davison was the new Miss Ireland. So I am feeling a link here.

It really was such a special day and I look back on it with great fondness. We loved having everybody we had at the wedding and yet there are so many people I suppose we would like to have asked … but it’s easy to look back and you have to let things like that go. The important thing is that so many friendships from that day have endured.

Thankfully, other things haven’t endured, such as the fashions. When I think about what the sprightly lad was offered in that department: the high-waisted trousers for a start (now more of a necessity than then), the nicely fitted shirt, shoes of the slip-on variety with tassels on them, and I was all set. And when I look back to that period, I wasn’t the only one sporting the old moustache, or, as they say in running circles, must dash! Back then, there were quite a few of us with them, but now I’m practically the only one. (I wouldn’t be the same without it and quite frankly, it’s grown on me – gotcha!)

When it came to the girls, there seemed to be a lot of colour about – well, it was August. We must remember the era we’re talking about here, the mid-eighties, and the world of Dynasty and Dallas, which meant that flowery frocks abounded and hair, for those who had enough of it, was of the bouffant variety, not forgetting the big shoulders. Shoulders that seemed to me to make it possible for girls to play in the position of quarterback on any college team in America. At any social gathering, you would see long flared skirts, jumpsuits, bolero jackets, Lycra everywhere … you’d hardly think a fellow would notice the stuff, but I think it’s because both my parents were in the rag trade. My father, Sean, had spent most of his working life in Clery’s department store on O’Connell Street, while my mam, Lily, until she had me, had worked in Cassidy’s clothes shop on South Great George’s Street. Sure wasn’t I only steeped in haute couture. Indeed, one radio colleague said to me, ‘You’re the only man I know who dresses for radio.’ Can’t help it, has to be done. When you dress up, you feel better about yourself and I think it gives you a sense that you give whatever you’re doing a better shot. When you get up in the morning, if your shirt is crisp, your trousers pressed, you have a bit of a shine on the old shoes, you’re off, set up for the day. To this day I can rarely pass Louis Copeland on Pembroke Street without going in and purchasing something from Adrian and his smiling crew.†

Meantime, back to the honeymoon. Did anybody mention it before now? You would think that having married an air hostess, there would be an element of the marriage, or at least of the beginning of the marriage, that would go according to some plan. Let me stop you there; that’s not how it went. We took a plane – it’s the only way to fly – to London after an overnight in a secret location – Moyglare Manor in Maynooth – for our first night of wedded bliss, and at Heathrow we basically looked to see what was available. As Maria worked for Aer Lingus, we were travelling on standby, hoping to go to the Caribbean paradise of St Lucia; instead, because the flight was full, it turned out to be the Italian paradise of Milan, which was fortunate, really, because had it turned out to be Anchorage, Alaska, our summer holidays for the next number of decades would have turned out very differently.

We flew to Milan with not a care in the world, nor a bed booked. ‘And tell me, Mart, what month did you go to Milan?’ I hear you say. Ah, well, let me see, that would be August.

‘You mean, the month that Milan closes down?’

The very one.

You know, it’s at times like this that you realise your good fortune in marrying an air hostess. It turned out to be a great plan, even though it wasn’t a plan at all, by virtue of the fact that we hired a car and headed off to Lago Maggiore and quite simply had the best time. In fact, we fell in love with Italy. And that love, like our own, has stayed with us throughout our lives. Every time we return to Italy, we both feel a sense of belonging, a sense of home-coming, a sense of … maybe it’s the wine!

Looking back on that inauspicious beginning to our Italian adventure, I’m now trying to recall the places we’ve been in Italy: Rome, Ischia, Capri, Sperlonga, Naples, Turin, Sorrento, Milan, Positano, Venice, Verona et al. A number of these have required return trips over the years, in case we might have missed a bit. That’s the wonderful thing about visiting Italy: it never ceases to enthral and amaze and delight and each trip is filled with the excitement of some new discovery: the very idea of hiring a car and driving along the Amalfi coast, with its wonderful views, listening to Giuseppe Di Stefano or Pavarotti on the CD player as the wind blows through your hair (that, my friend, probably deserves an entire chapter to itself: the hair, not the driving). And just for good measure we have also included Sicily in our plans. Flying to Catania one year we stayed in Taormina, where we chanced upon the film festival. We knew nobody, but it didn’t matter: everybody looked like a star, even the fellas driving the cars. Especially them. That’s the thing about the Italians: when there’s something on, they put on their best bib and tucker and sally forth like millionaires and you can see where that gets them! (I like to think that it’s their languid demeanour. As one of my Marty in the Morning listeners remarked recently: ‘I say, Marty, old boy, I had a languid demeanour once. You can get a cream to sort it out though!’)

And while we are on the topic of Italians, there is a great capacity for the limerick on the radio show: it seems to get the juices flowing early on. One such came when Ennio Morricone, or as my listener, Mr F Donnelly from Donabate, likes to refer to him, Eamon Macaroni, played in Dublin:

There was a young man from Rome,

On a Vespa with gleaming new chrome,

He shot round the forum,

With dashing decorum,

And landed on St Peter’s Dome!

…

Even though I’d known Maria for 11 years at this stage, starting a new chapter in our lives was very exciting. Any new direction in life, no matter what it is, personal or professional, is bound to bring great hope and expectation and a sense that this is the right thing to do, this is a new way to be, and so off we went, Maria and me, to take on board the most profound change imaginable – being married. We were suddenly being grown up, in charge of our own destinies, making decisions about ourselves, from the very basics, such as whether we had enough milk, because there was no one else to get it, to the bigger things. Responsibility arrived, I am reliably informed, yet we were only in our late twenties: what an adventure. The fact that we came from very different home lives, me as an only child and Maria as one of six, could have caused issues for us, but it felt right and it was right.

There is always that memory that stays with me of the two of us in our new house, our home, before the furniture had arrived and before we’d actually really decorated, sitting on the floor in the front room with a Chinese takeaway on a cardboard box in front of us and a bottle of the finest wine of its time, le Piat D’Or, a vintage of dubious quality. (There used to be an ad on the telly for this feisty red, ‘The French adore le Piat D’Or’. I doubt the French would let it inside the door.) Well, we thought we’d finally arrived. This would be our home for the next 25 years. As Burt Bacharach and Hal David once wrote (in fact, it was Hal David who wrote all the lyrics), ‘A House is not a Home’, but ours was. Maria would make it one, because it’s just her way.

…

But back to Bruce, the other big event of my life in 1985. I’m trying to remember when I became a fan of his and I’m pretty sure it was from the get-go. There is an amazing song on the first album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, called ‘Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’. It’s quiet and contemplative and Bruce paints a wonderful picture, like a good poet should. Then there’s the raw energy of ‘Rosalita’, a song that rocks still, over 40 years later. In a way, I was with Bruce before Miami Steve turned up, but don’t tell him: if you’ve seen The Sopranos or Lilyhammer on the telly, you will know why I’d like to keep this between you and me. You see, there are a number of songwriters who can give you that warm glow and then rock with the best of them. Van Morrison, Phil Lynott, Elton John and a few other carefully chosen ones. Bruce epitomises it, he just does. I recall years ago when I was on the ten-to-midnight slot on 2fm, I got to play all the rocky songs that Bruce would record and sometimes, in the comfort of my own studio, I would find myself dancing to him. Betimes, I would be aided in this onerous task by my producer Pat Dunne (there you are, another dancing partner exposed). On the subject of dancing, years after that Slane concert, I had the good fortune to be asked by the lovely Jim Aiken, the promoter, to act as DJ with Mark Cagney at a Fourth of July party for Bruce Springsteen in Carton House in Maynooth. We were like children, the pair of us, as The Boss, Miami