Horslips


Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs frequently inspired by traditional Irish airs, jigs and reels. The group are regarded as "founding fathers of Celtic rock" for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts. They formed in 1970 and 'retired' in 1980 for an extended period. The name originated from a spoonerism on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which became "The Four Poxmen of The Horslypse".
Although Horslips had limited commercial success when the band was playing in the 1970s, there was a revival of interest in their music in the late 1990s and they came to be regarded as one of the defining bands of the Celtic rock genre. The band resumed activity between 2004 and 2012, playing a small number of shows and producing releases, both live and studio. They played their final shows in August 2012.

Band members

  • Jim Lockhart, from James's St in Dublin, studied Economics and Politics at University College Dublin. He fell under the influence of Seán Ó Riada, wanting to build an orchestral sound out of Irish music. He plays keyboards, pipes, whistles and flute. He did vocals on a select number of songs, mainly in Manx and Irish.
  • Eamon Carr, is from Kells, County Meath. He and Peter Fallon were among the founding members of a poetry and beat performance group called Tara Telephone in Dublin in the late 1960s that also published the quarterly literary journal Capella. He is the drummer in the band.
  • Charles O'Connor, from Middlesbrough in the UK plays concertina, mandolin, fiddle and both electric and slide guitar. He also shares the main vocal tasks with Barry Devlin and Johnny Fean.
  • Barry Devlin, from Ardboe in County Tyrone, once trained as a Columban priest. He left this to study English in University College Dublin and afterwards joined a graphics company as a screenwriter. He is the band's bass player, shares vocals, and is its unofficial front man.
  • Johnny Fean spent his childhood in the city of Limerick and in Shannon, County Clare. He soon mastered guitar, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. In his teens, he played in sessions in Limerick and County Clare. Fean developed his listening tastes from rock to blues and incorporated it into his guitar style. In his late teens he played in a group called Sweet Street, with Joe O'Donnell on electric fiddle and Eugene Wallace. He later played in Jeremiah Henry, a rock and blues band. His idols were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. He left Jeremiah Henry in 1970 to play traditional music again in Limerick.

    Original run

Formation and line-ups

Barry Devlin, Eamon Carr and Charles O'Connor met when they worked at Arks Advertising Agency in Dublin. They were cajoled into pretending to be a band for a Harp Lager commercial but needed a keyboard player. Devlin said he knew a Jim Lockhart who would fit the bill. The four enjoyed the act so much that they decided to try being proper rock performers. They joined guitarist Declan Sinnott, a colleague of Eamon Carr's from poetry performance and musical group Tara Telephone and, briefly, Gene Mulvaney, to form Horslips in 1970.
The band went professional on St Patrick's Day 1972 having shed Mulvaney and released a single, "Johnny's Wedding", on their own record label, Oats. Declan Sinnott left soon after, primarily due to his annoyance at the group appearing in an advert for Mirinda orange drink. Sinnott was replaced by Gus Guest, who appeared on the group's second single "Green Gravel", but departed shortly thereafter. Johnny Fean then replaced Guest, and the 'classic' Horslips line-up that would appear on all future releases was set.

Main career

Album approach

Horslips designed their own artwork, wrote sleeve-notes and researched the legends that they made into concept albums. They established their own record label, Oats, and licensed the recordings through Atco, RCA and DJM for release outside Ireland. They kept their base in Ireland, unlike previous Irish bands.

First album

In October 1972, Horslips went to Longfield House in County Tipperary and recorded their first album, Happy to Meet – Sorry to Part, in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. On this first album the melodies were mostly traditional. Jim Lockhart was on keyboards and gradually mastered other instruments including uilleann pipes. Eamon Carr was on drums, including the Irish bodhrán. Happy To Meet, Sorry To Part was the fastest-selling album for eight years in Ireland. The sleeve was an elaborate concertina-shaped fold-out design.

The Táin

The Abbey Theatre in Dublin asked the band to provide the background for a stage adaptation of "The Táin". They leapt at the opportunity. "Táin Bó Cúailnge" is a tenth-century story written in Old and Middle Irish. It tells of an ancient war between Ulster and Connacht. The Táin was released in 1973 and had more original material alongside the traditional tunes, and greater emphasis on rock. In the same year a single, "Dearg Doom", went to number one in Germany.

Later albums

Dancehall Sweethearts followed in 1974, and also balanced folk with rock. Their fourth album, The Unfortunate Cup of Tea, drifted toward pop music and was generally considered less successful. RCA ended their funding deal for the group in 1975. The group funded their next venture themselves and went back to basics. Drive The Cold Winter Away was their most traditional album to date. They signed with DJM Records worldwide through A&R man Frank Neilson. The Book of Invasions: A Celtic Symphony, like The Táin, was an adaptation of Irish legends built into a complex story. It became their only entry in the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at No. 39 in 1977.

US and later work

Ever ambitious, the band now tried to make it in the United States. They brought in Jim Slye to become their manager. He later sold their publishing rights to William McBurney for £4,000. In 1977 they produced Aliens, about the experience of the Irish in nineteenth-century America. They toured Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States. The night they played the Royal Albert Hall in London was described by one critic as the loudest gig there since Jimi Hendrix. The Man Who Built America, produced by Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat and Tears and Blues Project fame, concerned Irish emigration to the US and received considerable airplay but broad approval was missing. The heavier sound did bring some acceptance in America but they lost their folk base and their freshness.
Short Stories, Tall Tales was their last studio album and was panned by the record company and critics alike.

"The Last Time"

At a time when The Troubles were at its peak, Horslips played gigs in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland without prejudice and were accepted everywhere. Their last recordings were from live performances at the Whitla Hall in Belfast April and May 1980. A few months later, on 12 October 1980 they played their final gig in the Ulster Hall. They made no public announcement. They simply gave an encore — the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time" and the final act was Charles O'Connor throwing his mangled fiddle into the audience. Ten years after they formed, they disbanded.

Musical life after the break up

Even before Horslips ended, Johnny Fean, Eamon Carr and two others founded the Zen Alligators in 1980. They played straight rock and soul on the Irish circuit, and they recorded several singles. Another spin-off group called Host contained Fean, O'Connor and Carr. They issued one album, Tryal, in 1984, and two singles.
The final album that had a Fean/Carr collaboration in the 1980s was The Last Bandits in the World.
Barry Devlin issued a solo album called Breaking Star Codes in 1983 with some help from Jim Lockhart. The album had 12 songs, each based, loosely, on the signs of the zodiac. Further Lockhart/Devlin collaborations included the theme tune to the popular RTÉ drama series Glenroe.
In 1986, Johnny Fean moved to England. An English indie band called Jacobites consisted of Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Their 1986 album Ragged School had Johnny on guitar. He also played sporadically with a Horslips tribute band Spirit of Horslips and pub gigs with pick up three-piece The Treat, which sometimes featured former Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell instead of Fean.
In 1990, the electric guitar intro to "Dearg Doom" was used for Put 'Em Under Pressure, Ireland's 1990 World Cup song, written by Larry Mullen and featuring the Republic of Ireland national football team and Moya Brennan. This use of the intro may be better known in Ireland than the original.
Charles O'Connor released an instrumental album, Angel on the Mantelpiece, in collaboration with Paul Whittaker in 1997.

Further activities

  • Johnny Fean continued to play live music with Stephen Travers, formerly of The Miami Showband.
  • After his retirement, Eamon Carr went on to become a producer of young rock talent in the mid-1980s, and also formed his own record label called Hotwire. He also did a number of specialist DJ slots on radio before morphing into a music/sports journalist with the Evening Herald in Dublin. More recently he presented on a Dublin station 'Carr's Cocktail Shack' in which he played American music of the 1950s and 1960s. In 2008, Carr and Henry McCullough co-wrote a new bunch of songs. A resulting album entitled Poor Man's Moon was released on 1 September 2008. Also in 2008, Carr released his first book, The Origami Crow, Journey Into Japan, World Cup Summer 2002, a book that is at once a travel log about his journey to Japan, a poetry collection, an homage to Japanese poet Bashō, and also has some sports commentary thrown in.
  • Barry Devlin directed for the screen and been a drama writer for radio and screen, as can be seen from his credits and for the radio detective drama He produced a number of U2 videos in the mid-1980s. Examples of his screen writing are evident in the joint RTÉ/BBC production Ballykissangel and ITV's The Darling Buds of May.
  • Jim Lockhart is head of production at RTÉ 2fm and has also done some production work and music arrangement.
  • Charles O'Connor owns two antique shops in Whitby, England. O'Connor continued to record folk and traditional music in his home recording studio.