From
the Trenton (NJ) Times
February 17, 2002
By
David McDonough
So
there you are in a pub in Ireland, and the man seated next to you is
preparing to tell you his life story. If he has spent his existence
cutting turf, or if his whole life has been sweetened by the drinking
of punch, you could be in for a long evening. For then he is a character
from an Irish folk song - you know, the kind made popular by the Clancy
Brothers and Tommy Makem back in the early Sixties. But if by chance
the man sitting next to you is that man whom Bob Dylan called "The best
ballad singer in the world", then he is Liam Clancy, and you are very
lucky. For Liam Clancy has done what every good Irishman does nightly
in his head - he has written his autobiography. The difference is that
Liam's story has found its way into print. The Mountain of the Women:
Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour (Doubleday,304 pages, $24.95) is the
first of what is to be a two-volume autobiography.
If
you've ever sung "The Leaving of Liverpool, "The Patriot Game" or "Finnegan's
Wake," or dozens of other folk standards, you have sung Liam Clancy's
music. Together with his brothers, Paddy and Tom, and their friend,
Tommy Makem, Liam formed the most popular Irish folk singing group the
world has known. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, stars of the Greenwich
Village folk scene, burst into international stardom with a stunning
sixteen minute live performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961. Within
a year everyone was singing Clancy Brothers songs and wearing the Irish
fisherman's sweaters popularized by the group. Before that, popular
performances of Irish music in America consisted mostly of Bing Crosby
records and annual St. Patrick's day renditions of "MacNamara's Band".
There was always a thriving traditional music scene, but it was small
and intimate, with musicians getting together for sessions in the kitchens
of the Irish-American enclaves in Chicago, New York and Boston.
The
Clancys not only popularized Irish folk music, they made it a symbol
of pride and heritage. In today's huge international Celtic music scene,
performers from U2 to Enya to The Corrs acknowledge their debts to the
Clancys. A new CD by Cherish the Ladies, an all-female traditional Celtic
band that includes among its alumni Liam's niece, Aoife Clancy, is called
"The Girls Won't Leave The Boys Alone". The title is a tribute to the
Clancy's 1964 album "The Boys Won't Leave the Girls Alone", and features
two duets with Liam Clancy.
The
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem broke up in 1968 after over twenty best-selling
albums; the folk music scene was shrinking and nostalgia was setting
in. Later, Liam and Tommy Makem teamed up for six successful albums
and tours in the Seventies and Eighties. The original group reunited
for one tour and an album in 1984. Paddy and Tom Clancy are both gone
now, leaving Liam to carry on. Liam has entranced a whole new audience
with albums with son Donal and nephew Robbie O'Connell, and keeps his
music and his act as fresh as ever. He remains incorrigible and irreverent
- he delighted an audience last spring at a sea chantey festival at
Mystic Seaport, by announcing, on the second day, "By God, my heart
is seared with sea chanteys," and doing some land-locked numbers. A
couple of years ago, at the Guinness Fleadh, he turned his omnipresent
sailor's cap round proceeded to do a rap version of one of his most
famous folk songs.
The Mountain of the Women will inevitably be compared with Frank
McCourt's two narratives, Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, and the fact is that
the two men have known each other for years and have much in common.
But there the similarities end. There is adversity in Liam Clancy's
life, but he stops far short of despair.
This
is the story of a shy, solemn-eyed young Irishman from the market town
of Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, born William Clancy, the youngest
of Robert and Joan Clancy's eleven children. He grew up with surrounded
by siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, and if times were hard,
they were at least shared hardships. His father was an insurance agent,
his mother the nurturer, troubled at times by a kind of religious mania,
but also the source of great songs and poetry. Young Willie Clancy grew
up in the Depression and during World War Two, envying his two oldest
brothers, Pat and Tom, both grown men, out and about in the world first
serving in the RAF and then living in New York City's Greenwich Village.
Robert Clancy made noises about having his youngest son join him in
the insurance business. But Willie's eyes were fixed on a career upon
the stage, and so, even while he went dutifully off to Dublin to learn
the insurance business, he spent his nights at the theater and taking
acting lessons. The insurance game and Willie soon parted company, and
the now renamed Liam pursued his acting career in Dublin, and then returned,
broke, to Carrick. Not long after, a singular woman entered his life,
and became the greatest single influence on him outside of his family.
Her
name was Diane Hamilton, nee Guggenheim. She was an American musicologist
in search of authentic Irish music, and she enlisted Liam's aid as she
traveled around the country. She was rich and generous and seductive,
and, as it turns out, quite mad. But she opened Liam's eyes to the heritage
all around him, and to the opportunities of he land beyond the sea.
Before long, alternately accepting her help and chafing under her smothering
sponsorship, he ended up in New York, where he renewed acquaintance
with the awe-inspiring figures of his big brothers.
When
he saw Tom and Paddy again, Liam writes, "I realized, with new clarity,
what total strangers we were. What few points of contact there were
in our utterly different experiences. I had known them only as big men
home on leave from the RAF full of loud stories and the braggadocio
and condescension that seemed to be common to all the people I'd known
coming back to the small hometown from the big, vastly superior world.
I had always been the child in the corner."
The
tone is set. Throughout his account of his life, Liam never loses sight
of his role as the naïf, the young man from the country. He confesses
himself sexually repressed, religiously troubled (he's not the first
to acknowledge that the Catholic Church weighed as heavily as the English
rule on many an Irish man and woman) and always, somehow, the little
brother, with the lack of power, but also, the lack of responsibility,
that entails. It's a tough task, to look back from 65 years and recall
things with the mixture of wonder, embarrassment, euphoria and shame
that youth enjoys, but Liam accomplishes it with flair. He recounts
with great good humor and frequent sadness the good times, the bad times,
and yes, the wild times. The title of this book is a double-entendre;
intentional or not, it is appropriate - apparently those famous Irish
sweaters did come off at times.
Above
all, Liam Clancy is a wonderful storyteller, and his tales of hanging
out in Greenwich Village with the icons of the day - meeting the ailing
Woody Guthrie, losing his girlfriend to the young Dylan - are worth
the price of admission. The names drop furiously: Robert Redford, Pete
Seeger, Lenny Bruce, Julie Harris, Walter Matthau, Richard Farina, but
make no mistake, this is Liam's song. In an interview, Liam described
his story as "seeing America with the eyes of a young fellow from a
small town in Ireland, and suddenly coming into fame and fortune. You
see, we wanted to be actors. We took the theater very seriously. Singing
was what we did for fun. That's probably why we were more successful
at singing." And now Liam can add writing a marvelous autobiography
to his list of successes.
