Just because the band has stopped playing, the music doesn't have to end. Kevin Courtneytracks down some former Irish rockstars who have continued to work in the usic industry, as DJs, promoters and wedding singers.
SO, you've done the band thing and tasted the rock'n'roll lifestyle. You've been there, done that, and sold a few T-shirts along the way. You've played every toilet up and down the country, and even jammed on the main stage at Oxegen (just after breakfast). You were once signed to a major label, but they dropped you after one EP, and you nearly got to the finals of You're a Star, but the public voted for a diddley-aye didgeridoo disco act instead.
Now, five years after your first, hopeful steps into the rock'n'roll arena, the band is no more. The drummer's gone back to his carpentry job, the guitarist has joined a religious cult, and your manager has absconded with the meagre takings from the last Norwegian tour.
Is this the end of the road? Do you hang up your guitar, call it a day and jump off this crazy rock'n'roll merry-go-round? Or do you spend the rest of your life trying to relive past minor glories while railing against a cruel business that sabotaged your chance at superstardom? Not at all! You just take a little jump to the left and, in the words of Noel Gallagher, find a better place to play.
When a group breaks up, some members go on to form another band and continue chipping away at stardom. Others simply go back to the day job. And a few savvy types use their experience to propel them into a more lasting career in the music biz. Instead of becoming bitter and twisted, they become producers, managers, promoters, broadcasters and label execs.
Feargal Sharkey, the ex-lead singer of The Undertones, is now one of the latter. After a short solo career, he took a job at Polydor Records as A&R manager. Instead of endlessly reheating My Perfect Cousinfor the chicken-in-a-basket crowd, he became the best-known A&R guy in the UK music biz and was appointed chairman of the government-run Live Music Forum.
The dole offices are littered with not-so-young musicians who didn't have enough cop-on to realise they weren't going to be the next U2. The music business, on the other hand, is filled with former rockers who used to be in a band, but are feeling much better now.
The booking manager
Playing guitar in indie hopefuls Revelinogave Bren Berryall the experience he needed to join with the big boys in the music industry. Not only was he integral to the band's three-pronged guitar sound, he was also their manager, booking agent and press officer. But, at 35, with his hard work bearing little fruit, Berry felt it was time to move on: "Peter Aiken was getting ready to open Vicar St, and he had the strange idea that I was employable."
Berry is married with a six-year-old daughter, and though he doesn't miss the financial insecurity of playing in a band ("a family can't survive on a rider of 24 cans of Heineken"), he does miss the feeling of being part of the last gang in town.
"We were on the dole for a large part of our adult lives, but we had brilliant times on the road, and also some horrible times. I don't miss those times when the friendships get tested. But I miss the chemistry of coming up with a great song. It's a great moment."
The happening people
Although Something Happensstill reconvene for an annual Christmas gig, all four members have found gainful employment in other areas of the music biz. With his Today FM slot, Pet Sounds, singer Tom Dunnehas given up trying to oust Bonoand is taking on Dave Fanninginstead. Guitarist Ray Harmanwas the resident musician on The Vinyl Curtain, RTÉ Radio's pop quiz, and now composes theme tunes for TV and radio programmes. Alan Byrnewas in charge of choosing the musical acts to appear on The Late Late Show, and has done a producer's course in RTÉ. Drummer Eamon Ryanworks for concert promoters MCD.
The designer
Catherine Owensis the woman behind many of U2's more eye-catching visual ideas, but, long before Zoo TV, she played bass in fempunk outfit The Boy Scoutz. "We weren't thinking about being pop stars - we were just huge punk rock fans," recalls Owens of her safety pin days. "We went to all the gigs that were on at the time."
But while she enjoyed making music, art was her first love, and after graduating from art college in Belfast, her buddies U2commissioned her to make political wall hangings for their Dublin rehearsal space. When the band asked Owens to give a lick of paint to some old Trabants for their Zoo TV tour, her future with the band was sealed. She created visuals for the Popmart and Elevation tours and, in 2006, directed U23D, a film of U2's Vertigo tour in South America.
Needless to say, Owens finds the work more creatively fulfilling than banging out three chords on a bass guitar every night.
"I don't miss playing in a band at all as it was not my true calling, but I do miss having time to trawl through the secondhand shops looking for cool gear to wear on stage."
The horsey types
Celtic prog-rockers Horslipsenjoyed success in the 1970s with such concept albums as The Tainand The Book of Invasion, but eventually the band forgot about fairies and returned to the real world. Jim Lockhartis now producing, among others, Dave Fanning's show on RTÉ Radio. Barry Devlinruns a successful TV production company and, in a true case of gamekeeper turned poacher, Eamon Carrput away the drumsticks and picked up a pen to become that rarest of things: a highly respected rock journo.
The record label exec
You'd never imagine Ireland's answer to Michael Hutchence taking an office job, but that's exactly what Shane O'Neilldid. As the leader of 1980s hopefuls Blue in Heaven, O'Neill was the resident rock god on the circuit. But, despite a deal with Island Records, superstardom never came. When his friend Bren Berry gave O'Neill a cassette album by young Dublin band The Idiots, he decided to form his own label, Dirt Records, and release the album.
"I had been doing some work for the Mulligan label, so I got to see how you could organise and put out a record," he says. "Because you've been in a band you can talk to bands quite easily, but you can also see the politics and the power plays."
O'Neill's current position as head of administration with Gael-Linnmay be a far cry from rock'n'roll, but he enjoys it immensely, particularly the label's ongoing work in remastering and repackaging archive works by Sean O'Riada and Seamus Ennis.
Married with two teenage kids, O'Neill certainly doesn't miss the days when the girls flocked to the front of the stage, and he doesn't miss the stuffy tourbuses, the scummy dressing-rooms, the smell of stale beer. "I'm relieved not to be doing it anymore. It would be an absolute mindfuck to go back."
The radio DJ
Cormac Battlewas the frontman for noisy rockers Kerbdog, who later became Wilt, but these days he makes all the racket as a late-night DJ on 2FM. "I was certainly a realist," he says. "When the Wilt thing dissolved I thought, I'm 34, what am I gonna do here? After 12 years I'd had enough of the music business."
Battle completed a desktop publishing course, but then heard that RTÉ was trawling for an indie DJ and saw his chance not to end up a bottom-feeder. When he heard he was hired, "I was so stunned. I thought, holy shit, they were mad enough to give me a job."
When he was in a band, nothing seemed more important to Battle than getting playlisted on national radio. "Getting our session played on Fanning - we thought, this is it, we've made it. I know what it feels like for a young band or musician. So I feel morally obliged to listen to everything."
The playlister
When Brian Adamswas in jangly guitar band The Tulips, he dreamed of getting his songs played on the radio. Now, as head of music at Today FM, Adams is inundated with demos from young bands hoping for airplay. He says he is astonished by how badly bands present themselves to music biz types: "It amazes me how untogether bands are. CDs with no cover and the tracks scribbled in biro. Badly-written press releases. There's no excuse for bad presentation."
Adams believes there's a time when young musicians should "chase their dream", but also a time when they should think about doing something else. "When you're older and married with kids it gets harder to be away on tour. Even the bigger bands tend to go on tour during school holidays."
It was during an all-night drive home from Letterkenny that Adams resolved to do something different with his life.
"A snare drum fell and hit me on the head as we arrived into Dublin, and I found myself standing on O'Connell Street in the early hours of the morning covered in blood. I thought, there must be a better way."
The impresario
After three attempts at rock stardom, first with Those Handsome Devils, then Guernicaand finally The Honey Thieves, guitarist Derek Turner was ready for something different. So he moved to Dundalk, Co Louth, where local entrepreneur Mark Dearey asked him to run rock venue the Spirit Store. "It's only a small-capacity venue," Turner says, "but there's a welcoming atmosphere, a good sound system, and we pay attention to details."
Alan Cullivan, one of his former bandmates, now manages The Thrills, and Turner is also trying his hand at the band management game with Irish group The Flaws. Having seen The Honey Thieves robbed of their chance at fame, Turner was determined not to let his young charges be KO'd by the pitfalls of the music biz. When a deal with Polydor fell through, Turner and the band simply formed their own label and organised all the promotion and distribution for their debut album, which is now receiving great reviews.
"I never miss playing on stage," Turner says. "I don't think I was entirely comfortable on stage - I'm more natural behind the scenes than in the spotlight."
