Booklist / January
1 & 15, 2002 Pg. 790
If
the Clancy Brothers are the Beatles of Irish music, then Liam is Paul,
for he, like Paul, was known to girls as “The cute one.” Almost a generation
younger than his brothers Paddy and Tom, Liam joined them and Tommy
Makem, of Northern Ireland, to bring traditional Irish music to America
in the ‘60s, and he continues to tour today. His sing-and-tell memoir,
which is also drink-and-tell, with a good deal of that kissing stuff,
too, is named after Slievenamon, near his home. The mountain, famous
because of the prehistoric cairn on it that reinforces its identification
with the breast of the earth goddess, was the setting of a legendary
footrace by women lusting after the hero Fionn mac Cumhail.
As
Clancy tells it, his early life was a bit like Fionn’s, with heiresses
in pursuit of his virtue, which once vanquished, left him free to thoroughly
enjoy the ‘60s. The mythic motif winding through the book isn’t, however,
as arrogantly masculine as identification with Fionn makes it seem.
For Clancy shows that women have been a force to reckon with—to be loved,
feared, desired, honored, and esteemed—in his life, beginning with his
mother, at whose knee he learned many of the songs that later made him
famous. This is an endearing and lively memoir—“Excess,” Clancy admits,
is “one of the little failings of my life”—that fans of Irish music,
in particular, should adore.
Review
by : Patricia Monaghan.
