Brendan Behan

This months hell raiser was written by the smart fella’s writing for the excellent blog Londoncelticpunks, who gave us kind permission to reproduce the article here

REMEMBERING BRENDAN BEHAN 1923-1964

 ‘Streams Of Whiskey’ – The Pogues

“Last night as I slept
I dreamt I met with Behan
 Shook him by the hand and we passed the time of day
When questioned on his views
On the crux of life’s philosophies
He had but these few clear and simple words to say

I am going, I am going
Any which way the wind may be blowing
I am going, I am going
Where streams of whiskey are flowing

I have cursed, bled and sworn
Jumped bail and landed up in jail
Life has often tried to stretch me
But the rope always was slack
And now that I’ve a pile
I’ll go down to the Chelsea
I’ll walk in on my feet
But I’ll leave there on my back

Oh the words that he spoke
Seemed the wisest of philosophies
There’s nothing ever gained
By a wet thing called a tear
When the world is too dark
And I need the light inside of me
I’ll go into a bar and drink
Fifteen pints of beer”

written by Shane MacGowan

Video of song here>http://youtu.be/hkGMH-mIc4k

If there was ever a writer who could symbolise celtic-punk it would be Brendan Francis Behan. The man who, along with Luke Kelly, our very own Shane MacGowan seems to taken most inspiration from. Today is the 91st anniversary of his birth so we thought we’d enlighten those of you who do not know him or his works.

Most famous for his earthy satire and political opinions. While he was not in jail, or the pub, Behan worked odd jobs and wrote plays and stories that depicted the life of the working classes. Several of his books were banned in Ireland and he spent most of the years from 1939 to 1946 in English and Irish penal institutions on political charges. However, his writings are lively, full of humour, and, somewhat surprisingly, do not show signs of anger or bitterness toward the world at large.

“… it was not really the length of sentence that worried me–for I had always believed that if a fellow went into the I.R.A. at all he should be prepared to throw the handle after the hatchet, die dog or shite the licence–but that I’d sooner be with Charlie and Ginger and Browny in Borstal than with my own comrades and countrymen any place else. It seemed a bit disloyal to me, that I should prefer to be with boys from English cities than with my own countrymen and comrades from Ireland’s hills and glens.”

Early Life and Family Background

Born into inner-city Dublin he lived his childhood in the slums of the city. In spite of the surroundings, he did not end up becoming an unlettered slum lad. Much of his education was owed to his family, well-read, and of strong Republican sympathies. Behan’s family on both sides was traditionally anti-British. His uncle Peader Kearney was the author of the Irish national anthem, ‘The Soldier’s Song’. Another uncle, P.J. Bourke, managed the Queens Theatre in Dublin, and one of Bourke’s sons was the dramatist Seamus de Burca. Brendan’s brother Dominic became a dramatist, too, and gained also success and a balladeer and singer.

At Behan’s birth, his father, a housepainter and Republican activist, was being held in a British compound due to his involvement in the Irish uprising of 1916-1922. Behan’s mother had previously been married to another Republican, who had died during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Brendan attended Catholic schools until age 14, after which he left his studies and worked as a house painter. From the age of nine, he served in the Fianna, a youth organization tied to the IRA, and by the late 1930s, he was working as an IRA messenger boy.

Arrests and Imprisonment

In 1939, Behan was arrested in Liverpool on a sabotage mission following a deadly explosion in Coventry. He was sentenced to three years in a Borstal reform school for attempting to blow up a battleship in Liverpool harbor. After his release, he returned to Ireland, but in 1942, he was sentenced to 14 years for the attempted murder of two detectives. Behan served time at Mountjoy Prison and the Curragh Military Camp, until his release in 1946 under a general amnesty. He resumed house painting and joined Dublin’s literary underground, which included Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, J.P. Donleavy, and Sean O’Sullivan.

In 1947, Behan was imprisoned again in Manchester, serving a short term for allegedly helping an IRA prisoner escape. Reflecting on the nature of political violence, Behan ironically noted that “the man with a big bomb is a statesman, while the man with a small bomb is a terrorist.

During his years in prison, Behan started to write, mainly short stories in an inventive stylization of Dublin dialect. The Landlady was written at the Curragh. Gretna Green, about the execution of two Irishmen, was produced at the Queen’s Theatre as a part of a Republican commemorative concert. In 1955 Behan married Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld, a painter and the daughter of noted Dublin artist, Cecil Salkeld. The marriage did not stop him from continuing his self-destructive life-style, even after he was diagnosed as diabetic.

Behan’s best-known novel, Borstal Boy (1958), drew its material from his experiences in a Liverpool jail and Borstal. The young narrator progresses from a rebellious adolescent to greater understanding of himself and the world:

“There were few Catholics in this part of the world and the priest had a forlorn sort of a job but Walton had cured me of any idea that religion of any description had anything to do with mercy or pity or love.”

Behan also sailed intermittently on ships, as he had become a certified seaman in 1949. However, at the beginning of his career, Behan faced difficulties in getting his plays performed in Ireland. The Quare Fellow, based on his prison experiences, was initially turned down by both the Abbey Theatre and the Gate. Nevertheless, it eventually found success at the Pike Theatre Club in 1954, gaining critical acclaim. As a result, reviewers began to compare him to a new Sean O’Casey, and the play was transferred to London’s West End for a six-month run. The events of the play are set during the twenty-four hours preceding an execution, which is thought to have contributed to the eventual abolition of capital punishment in Britain. Additionally, Behan often attacked the false piety behind public attitudes toward issues such as sex, politics, and religion..

Behan found fame difficult. He had long been a heavy drinker describing himself on one occasion as

“a drinker with a writing problem”

and claiming

“I only drink on two occasions—when I’m thirsty and when I’m not”

and developed diabetes in the early 1960s. As his fame grew, so too did his alcohol consumption. This combination resulted in a series of famously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television.

 

Among Behan’s other dramas are The Big House (1957), a radio play written for the BBC, and The Hostage  (1958), written in Gaelic under the title An Giall and set in a disreputable Dublin lodging house, brothel!,owned by a former IRA commander. This play, perhaps Behan’s most enduring work, was first produced in Irish at the Damer Hall in Dublin and then in London, Paris, and New York. It depicts events that surround the execution of an eighteen-year-old IRA member in a Belfast jail. The audience never sees him. He has been accused of killing an Ulster policeman and sentenced to be hanged. A young British soldier, Leslie Williams, is held hostage in the brothel. After the IRA prisoner has been executed, Leslie is eventually killed in a gunfight, when the police attack the place. Before it a love story develops between Leslie and Teresa, a young girl, who promises never to forget him. In the finale Leslie’s corpse rises and sings:

The bells of hell 
Go ting-a-ling-a-ling 
For you but not for me. 
Oh death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling 
Or grave thy victory?

In his dramas Behan used song, dance, and direct addresses to the audience. Occasionally the author himself would appear in the audience and criticize the actors and shout instructions to the director. Several of Behan’s works were staged at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, which left deep impact on modern theatrical style. Littlewood viewed the theatre as a collective and revised much of his script for The Hostage-the author himself approved all changes.

Notoriety and critical attention came to Behan in the mid-1950s and contributed to his downfall, fuelled by his prolonged drinking bouts and belligerent behaviour.

“An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whisky and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College”

Brendan Behan wrote The Hostage, his last major drama, while his final books consisted mainly of anecdotes transcribed from recordings. Like Dylan Thomas, Americans lionized Behan to the point of exhaustion. Unfortunately, his lifelong battle with alcoholism cut his career short, and he died in a Dublin hospital on March 20, 1964, at the young age of 41. The IRA gave Behan an honorary guard, and several newspapers described his funeral as the largest since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell. . According to the United States Library of Congress, Behan remains one of the most important Irish literary figures of the 20th century. Although he left behind a lasting legacy, one can’t help but wonder what more he might have achieved if he had managed to lay off the bottle.

‘BRENDAN BEHAN’S DUBLIN’: RTE documentary from 1966.

 SELECTED WORKS:

•  The Quare Fellow,1954 – Film adaptation in 1962, dir. Arthur Dreifuss, starring  Patrick McGoohan.
• Borstal Boy, 1958
• Brendan Behan’s Island – An Irish Sketchbook, 1962
• Hold Your Hour and Have Another, 1963
• The Scarperer, 1964
• Brendan Behan’s New York, 1964
• Confessions of an Irish Rebel, 1965
• After The Wake, 1981
• The Letters of Brendan Behan, 1991
• The King of Ireland’s Son, 1997

The Auld Triangle…

Video here>http://youtu.be/aa7birRBmNM

A hungry feeling, came o’er me stealing

And the mice they were squealing in my prison cell

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

Oh to start the morning, the warden bawling

Get up out of bed you, and clean out your cell

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

Oh the screw was peeping and the lag was sleeping

As he lay weeping for his girl Sal

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

On a fine spring evening, the lag lay dreaming

And the seagulls were wheeling high above the wall

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

Oh the wind was sighing, and the day was dying

As the lag lay crying in his prision cell

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

 In the female prison there are seventy women

And I wish it was with them that I did dwell

And that auld triangle, went jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

Original article here

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Shane MacGowan

(With St. Patricks Day fast approaching) I thought I might as well write about one of Ireland’s most legendary boozers and hell raisers, the one and only Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan.

Born into a strong Irish family in Kent, England, on Christmas Day in 1957. MacGowan’s early childhood, mostly spent in the family home in the country of Tipperary, with relatives, until he was six, was steeped in Irish music, republicanism, religion and Celtic folklore. Both sides of his family were very musical. He used to learn a song a day from his mother’s family, building up a huge repertoire of old Irish songs. One his earliest memories is of singing on a table for “more than 40 friends and relatives. “. Public performances were a regular thing for the young Shane.

His mother, Therese, was a singer and traditional Irish dancer, had him reading Hardy, Dickens and Edna O’Brien, his father went to university, also very well read, had him reading Joyce from the age of six. Most Irish people struggle to finish that book never mind trying to read it at six!

The family home was seen as an open house, a “shebeen” – people would come around at all hours and there would be dancing, card-playing, boozing and singing. Supposedly his uncles gave him two bottles of Guinness a day from the age of five. He was given his first bottle of whiskey at the age of six. Shane didn’t have to go to a pub, he grow up in one! He was smoking and drinking and gambling from a young age, a very young age! These early years in Tipperary seem to have set the course for his life.

Like quite a few children of immigrants, he ferried between the old country and the new one, but when he was six he was sent back to live with his parents in London.

But it wasn’t all drink and gambling, he was also very literate ––learning to read really young. Regarded as a gifted child he won a literature scholarship to Westminster school by writing essays. A renowned English public school close to the Houses of Parliament. He was found in possession of drugs (dope, acid n pills) and was expelled in his second year, 14, not that Shane cared much.

His early years in London were spent wandering the streets in the west end, as the legend goes, hanging out with junkies and rent boys getting up to all sorts.There is also the six months he spent at 18 in a detox clinic

Then his whole world changed in 76, when he saw the Sex Pistols, and discovered punk. Shane was very active in the early life of Punk and got his first taste of fame in 1976 at a Clash gig, when his ear was damaged by a disgruntled girl. A photographer snapped a picture of him covered in blood and it made the papers, with the headline “Cannibalism at Clash Gig”.

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~mroman/pics/cannibal1.jpg http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~mroman/articles/NME110676.html

This was merely one of a sequence of remarkable punk activities he indulged in during the late 1970s, eventually deciding to give punk a go by forming his own punk rock band, The Nipple Erectors, later retitled “The Nips”.

In 1980 he met Peter “Spider” Stacy and Jem Finer, and later Cait O’Riordan and Andrew Ranken, they were The Pogues. (Their first name, Pogue Mahone, which is Irish for “kiss my arse”.)

This new London band gave a voice to the Irish in London, a much maligned group suffering under the anti-Irish racism and resentment of the 80s, in the midst of the IRAs bombing campaign in Britain.

Many of his songs are influenced by Irish nationalism, Irish history, and the experiences of the Irish in London and the United States, and London life in general.

And what MacGowan and his fellow band-members in The Pogues did, in mixing the best of a tradition – tender ballads and full-throttled jigs – and giving it a fierce, anarchic edge, smashed the boundaries between what was meant to be traditional and concrete with a real revolution from the soul. This was new Irish music married with raw high velocity punk and street poetry, the Pogues had invented Celtic punk.

But it wasn’t all loud and brash, some of the music was extremely well written and poetic. Songs such as “Sally MacLennane , “Streams of Whiskey”, “Rainy Night in Soho”, “Thousands are Sailing” and, perhaps their best-known song “Fairytale of New York” are high points from their albums. Albums – “Rum Sodomy & the Lash”, and “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” considered must have albums.

Of course it should also be pointed out that many of the songs covered London, reminding people that they were not just a band that played Irish punk but more importantly they were a London Irish band playing punk rock.

With music that appeals to both traditionalists and punk heads. Their gigs were legendary, explosive affairs. They toured and toured, building up a cult like following.

Of course this high octane lifestyle results in many boozing sessions. The Pogues were a hard drinking band. They liked a pint, and a fight, with each other if no one else was available.

All their drinking and fighting shenanigans caused the odd problem. On a good night the gigs were amazing, on a bad night a shambles. Most concerts Shane actually performed great while being completely wasted. However it’s difficult to maintain this. Shane was trying everything; speed, smack, coke, crack every drink you could possibly imagine. The other band members of The Pogues often locked him up in his hotel room to keep him relatively sober until the concert

The famous hotel story: Joey Cashman, would order Shane to stay outside a hotel while he checked in so they could get a room before anyone saw how bad he looked. The trick usually worked. On one occasion, though, as Cashman was speaking with the receptionist, the front doors opened two men entered carrying MacGowan on their shoulders, his trousers down around his knees, and no underwear. In shock, Cashman turned to the receptionist: “What kind of hotel is this!?” He then got a much reduced price from the embarrassed clerk and the band sharply went to their rooms before the hotel could change their minds.

His fellow band members, got so tired of Shane’s drinking, lateness for gig and flights and the performances were gradually getting worse that in 1991 in a hotel room in Japan, they kicked him out. This was the infamous tour of japan where Shane was allegedly said to have taken 50 tabs of acid, three bottles of whiskey and a good quantity of Saki. No wonder he was booted out. Shane was essentially kicked out of his own group!

After The Pogues threw MacGowan out for unprofessional behaviour, he formed a new band, Shane MacGowan and The Popes. From December 2003 up to May 2005, Shane MacGowan & the Popes toured extensively in UK/Ireland/Europe. The Popes were good but essentially they were like a tribute band. And the Pogues themselves were not the same without their iconic lead singer. In 2001 they all got back together for a sell-out tour in 2001 and in May 2005, MacGowan re-joined the Pogues permanently.

The teeth! Although Shane got rid of most of his teeth during the early years of Punk, head-butting walls can do that, there is a famous story of the day he tried to eat volume three of The Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits. He was convinced that World War III was imminent, that as leader of the Irish Republic, hosting a superpowers conference, that the best way to reveal America’s cultural inferiority was to eat a Beach Boys CD.

Shane MacGowan quotes:

‘I was smoking and drinking and gambling before I could talk.’

“Everyone drinks……….Well, unless they don’t.”

“I’ve been a babe magnet for quite a while now.”

“The British press have been giving me six months to live for the past twenty years they must be getting pissed off interviewing me by now. “

“The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks- they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.”

“Bad health is a consequence of very good living”

“If you didn’t have pain, then you wouldn’t realise when you are having pleasure”

“I just live like I want and it upsets some people”

Anyway have a happy St Patrick’s Day 2015

 

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Whiskey in the Jar

“Whiskey in the Jar” is a famous Irish traditional song, set in the southern mountains of Ireland, the tale of a highwayman who, after robbing a military or government official, is betrayed by a woman, and is one of the most widely performed traditional Irish songs. It has been recorded by numerous professional artists since the 1950s.

As I was a goin’ over the far famed Kerry mountains

I met with captain Farrell and his money he was counting
I first produced my pistol and I then produced my rapier
Saying “Stand and deliver” for he were a bold deceiver

Chorus:
Mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da
Wack fall the daddy-o, wack fall the daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the jar

I counted out his money and it made a pretty penny
I put it in me pocket and I took it home to Jenny
She sighed and she swore that she never would deceive me
But the devil take the women for they never can be easy

(Chorus)

I went up to my chamber, all for to take a slumber
I dreamt of gold and jewels and for sure ‘t was no wonder
But Jenny drew me charges and she filled them up with water
Then sent for captain Farrell to be ready for the slaughter

(Chorus)

’twas early in the morning, just before I rose to travel
Up comes a band of footmen and likewise captain Farrell
I first produced me pistol for she stole away me rapier
I couldn’t shoot the water, so a prisoner I was taken

(Chorus)

Now there’s some take delight in the carriages a rolling
and others take delight in the hurling and the bowling
but I take delight in the juice of the barley
and courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early

(Chorus)

If anyone can aid me ‘t is my brother in the army
If I can find his station in Cork or in Killarney
And if he’ll go with me, we’ll go rovin’ in Kilkenny
And I’m sure he’ll treat me better than my own a-sporting Jenny

(Chorus)

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