The passing of time can be a strange concept, Pádraig Meehan agrees. Even so, that’s no excuse for taking 40 years to release your debut album. The guitarist and songwriter of Those Nervous Animals, the eclectic Sligo band who enjoyed a string of hits in the 1980s but never got around to releasing a full-length record during their eight years together, has just became a grandfather at the ripe old age of 64.
There’s another new baby in Meehan’s life as well: The Mission Sessions is the band’s first album, released a full four decades after they first formed in 1981.
Meehan says he was the one to broach the topic of getting the band back together last year after the pandemic scuppered the promotional plans of Bedlam Suitcase, the Sligo-based collective he has played with (and released an album with in February 2020).
“It’s been a long pregnancy,” he admits, laughing. “For the first while, [the initial lockdown period] was beautiful weather and everyone at home sitting around, wondering was it even real. Myself and Tom [Jamieson, engineer and now the band’s percussionist], who’d been on the Bedlam project, were thinking what will we do. So we chatted and thought feck it – let’s get the Animals going. And we started ringing people, and everyone we spoke to said ‘Yeah! Let’s do it for the craic!’ And that was it.”
The pandemic gave Meehan and the band's core members, vocalist Barry Brennan and bassist Eddie Lee, a new perspective on Those Nervous Animals' journey over the decades. Although they had come together for brief reunions at different points over the years, he notes how there was a "different mood" this time around.
So last summer the band, renowned for their blend of pop, rock and blue-eyed soul, started gathering old recordings, finishing ideas and re-recording songs remotely for the purpose of an album. “It’s not quite the same as being physically in the room with people,” he agrees, “but at the same time, it’s as good as it gets at the moment, I guess.”
Meehan has continued to write and play guitar since Those Nervous Animals' heyday, despite life taking him in an unlikely direction of a career in archaeology after their split in 1989. He holds fond memories of those early days. Though consigned to "also-ran" status by many Irish rock music historians, they played some big gigs at the height of their fame, not least Self-Aid in 1986 alongside the U2, The Boomtown Rats, The Pogues and Van Morrison.
Despite the buzz and the promise of a big record deal and international fame, it never happened for Those Nervous Animals. With the benefit of hindsight, Meehan has some theories on why, echoing bassist Eddie Lee’s recent statement that they were “never cut out to be pop stars”.
We did have big offers and we were flown to London and spoke to various 'eminences' – but it didn't happen
“At the time, Dublin was buzzing with the success of U2 and all those people were looking for the next big band,” he muses. “There was a queue of us – everyone knew Aslan – and everyone had been to the same parties. But some of the qualities that U2 had, like resilience...”
He trails off. “I suppose that’s one aspect of it. Is that the life you want to live? At this point in my life, I know an awful lot of people who’ve become massively famous, and I wonder did we subconsciously not want it enough?
“And there was another commercial aspect to it as well, in that there were some mistakes made. Somebody dropped the ball at some point. I won’t go into terrible detail about it, but there were a few little slip-ups made. And apart from that,” he concludes, “there’s a huge element of luck.”
He admits it took him some time to get over the disappointment of the band “fizzling out”.
“We did have big offers and we were flown to London and spoke to various ‘eminences’ – but it didn’t happen,” he shrugs. “I was gutted afterwards for a while. The amount of money that was offered to us at one point was more than my dad’s house was worth. But that was all a load of rock ‘n’ roll showbiz bulls**t, really. Of course, over the years I’ve reconciled it and I’m really delighted with the way things have worked out.”
As for why an album never materialised, the answer is less obvious. The band had worked with the likes of Bill Whelan, Donal Lunny and Nicky Ryan (Enya) on their early singles and released a mini-album called Hyperspace in 1985, but a full-length endeavour remained beyond their reach.
“We had a few pops at it,” he says. “After that immediate big buzz didn’t happen, in the early 1990s we all got together again. We did a tour and had a single, Rocket Ship. We have some friends from that time, the likes of Nicky Ryan, and we got some help and support to do the album, and we messed it up, to be quite truthful. We went in and did some of the work, we spent the time working together – but there was just something not quite right in the dynamic with it. It just sort of fizzled out.
“To be honest, there was more disappointment at that point than there was after losing the big deal. And that was the turning point where we kind of realised what [the band] was going to be. People grow; it’s like a family, or a relationship. At some point, you realise you maybe need to do other stuff and different things. But I still love the other lot to bits. And we have a bit of maturity now that we didn’t have in ’93 when we tried it before.”
He laughs loudly. “It’s only taken another 27 years.”
The Mission Sessions – named for the now-demolished Georgian House in Sligo that Meehan and Brennan inhabited in the band’s early days – has been described as a “time capsule” of the past 40 years. There are songs on the tracklist from every decade since the 1980s, yet there is a cohesion and sense of unity that ties it together and signifies a band still in fine fettle. Brennan’s vocals remain a highlight and the remastering of old tracks gives them a new lustre.
Given the passage of time, Meehan’s feelings about many of the older songs have changed – not least of The Business Enterprise (My Friend John), their biggest hit that was recently rereleased as a single.
“We made a little promo video for it, and I got back into what I was talking about when I wrote the song – about transformation and things like that,” he says. “Whereas I went through a phase of hating the bloody song. You’d be touring it and the audience would insist you play it; you’d hear people shouting for it all night; I can understand how people get sick of something.
“But that’s all gone away now. I love it now, and I think it’s a nice little piece of pop music.”
The release of The Mission Sessions is about tying up some loose ends but Those Nervous Animals' story is still unfinished
The release of the album undoubtedly makes for a neat ending to their prolonged narrative, but is there really still a captive audience for Those Nervous Animals, decades after they first made an impact on the charts? Meehan insists the band's name "still holds meaning for some people", pointing out their recent encouraging Spotify stats in places like Australia and South America.
The release of The Mission Sessions is about tying up some loose ends, he says, but Those Nervous Animals’ story is still unfinished. On that front, the band have been working with one of their old collaborators on “a few other secret things” in recent times, although Meehan is hesitant to make the details public knowledge just yet, only to say that “there’ll be more stuff later. There’s other exciting things coming.”
Is there a sense of nostalgia to the whole affair? Undoubtedly – but that doesn’t mean they are not eager to convert a new generation of fans to Those Nervous Animals, either. If the past year has proven anything, after all, it’s that it’s never too late.
“I think it is about laying some ghosts to rest,” Meehan nods. “We knew we had this material and I remember sitting with my wife one night and playing it back, and she said, ‘What are you doing, that you haven’t released this?!’ But it’s almost like a duty; that you have to do it, put it together and respect the fact that we love each other as a band and want people to hear our work.
“So it’s not that we think it’s a last-gasp thing; in fact, it feels like the beginning of something.”
The Mission Sessions is released on March 26th
